


Sarge Saw

by twifantasyfan



Category: Flashpoint (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 53,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24974926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twifantasyfan/pseuds/twifantasyfan
Summary: In the season 4 episode "The Cost of Doing Business", Sgt. Greg Parker finds a half-dressed Sam Braddock at Jules Callaghan's house, getting undeniable proof that his two subordinates are back in a secret relationship again. But, as Greg tells them during the ensuing confrontation: "I knew. I hoped I was wrong, but I knew." So what tipped him off? Well...
Relationships: Sam Braddock/Jules Callaghan
Kudos: 10





	1. 4.1 Personal Effects

**Author's Note:**

> This story was originally posted on fanfiction.net between 2016-19. Some minor edits have been made from that version.

Sam Braddock settled into his padded swivel living room chair and swung his feet up onto the matching footstool. He had a magazine in his hand but didn't open it. Instead he just leaned his head back and tried to relax. He could already tell that it wasn't going to happen, though. The annual SRU team requalification process was never fun--he knew that from having done it a couple times already. But this...it had felt like he was a suspect in a police investigation, being sweated to force a confession. And he had confessed. Not as much as he could have, but more than he probably should’ve for his professional well-being. Sam didn't think he'd earned any points with Toth for his honesty during the interview. 

_"Would you have continued the relationship secretly if you could?" Toth asked._

_"Yes." His answer had been simple and direct. Yes, he would have kept dating Jules, giving the rules the proverbial finger, if she'd wanted the same thing._

_"There's a reason that's against SRU policy. It puts your teammates at risk," Toth pointed out. Sam has never bought that argument, and still doesn't. He'd never once put Jules' life ahead of anyone else's on the team--and is convinced that he never would. Hell, Ed Lane is alive and about to welcome his second child into the world precisely **because** Sam put [Ed's] life ahead of Jules'. If he'd given Jules the priority, Sam would have been in the ambulance with her going to the hospital, not in overwatch with his Remi, taking the Scorpio shot that killed Petar Tomasic and kept him from shooting Ed in revenge for his father's death._

_"But it makes no difference, because it's over. We're colleagues now, and that's it." Sam directly met Toth's eyes as he delivered the statement. He doesn't like it, but they have been just friends for the past two years. Both of them free to date others; though while Jules had done so, Sam himself hadn't. No one else could possibly mean more to him than she had--than she still does--or even come close to equaling her._

And there it was: the big reason he couldn't relax. Jules. When he'd emerged from the briefing room after his psychological interview session, it had been to find her standing a little way down the hallway that led to the locker rooms.

_"How'd it go?" he'd asked her. Not that he really needed to--the tightness around her mouth and eyes more than amply betrayed her stressed state._

_"Not good."_

_"Me neither."_

_"He gave me a hard time because of you." Jules swung around to stand beside him, both of them leaning against the hallway handrail._

_"Yeah."_

_"They have us under a microscope, just in case we treat each other any different."_

_"What's it going to take?" Sam pushed off the wall, turned, and paced a step or two in frustration. "A chaperone?"_

_"That's the thing, Sam," Jules spoke softly. "It's not going to go away."_

His pulse went overdrive with her words, and made him very thankful that he was no longer connected to Toth's polygraph machine--no way on earth could he have kept his reaction from being recorded this time, Special Forces training or no Special Forces training. Jules--whether she meant to or not--had given him hope that things between them might not be as permanently over as it had seemed. Oh, they'd managed to get back to a normal working relationship, and even an easy and close friendship, but it had never really been enough, not for him. He'd never stopped missing her being in his personal life, never stopped playing the 'what if' game of whether they might never have broken up if he'd followed her suggestion to transfer to a different team. It had taken every ounce of his strength to hold up the impassive soldier mask and pretend he didn't want to strangle her new paramedic boyfriend Steve. Sam didn't kid himself that he hadn't given thanks when the couple had ended things after Steve had been shot by the EDP (Emotionally Disturbed Person) who'd taken hostages in a coffee shop he'd believed was run by terrorists--in fact, a tiny mean and selfish part of Sam had thought that Steve had deserved to be shot for rushing recklessly into the scene and pulling Jules in along with him.

A knock on the door had him calling out "Just a second," as he got up and headed to open it. Natalie had run out for some groceries a little while ago and was due back anytime now; Sam didn't think he’d locked the door when she left but maybe he had. Or maybe she'd gotten more stuff than planned and didn't have a hand free to open the door with. He pulled the door open and his lungs deflated in a rush of air. It was Jules, not Natalie, who had just knocked. She took a step forward, almost hesitantly, wordlessly asking if she could come in. With equal silence, Sam moved backward to open the door up wider and let her inside his apartment. Jules clearly went home before coming here--she definitely hadn't been wearing that dark blue dress and white sweater when they'd left SRU after being dismissed by Commander Holleran an hour ago.

She stopped in his kitchen area and swung around to face him, one hand on the island, as he shut the door and slowly paced toward her.

"You were right," he said.

"About what?" she wasn't usually this cagey, but then again, neither was he. They were both treating this like Spike did with a bomb call, every move careful and deliberate.

"It's not going to go away." Now she knows how he feels, just like he's known her feelings since she'd said those same words earlier today. "So..."

"So," and her voice is barely a whispered breath. 

They're now standing close enough to touch, and he does just that, leaning down to claim her lips with his own. The first kiss is tentative, two old lovers testing the waters, seeing where they stand. But just like the first time they'd kissed outside the Royal York hotel, passion flares up now with white-hot intensity. It was as if the past couple years of them being "just friends" and merely teammates had never been. The moment was as powerful as that when the melting ice that had been frozen on top of a river finally reaches that critical point and snaps, freeing the raging torrent underneath to rush and flow uncontrolled toward its destination. Their kisses become firmer, deeper. Sam pulls Jules close for a moment, before sliding his hands to frame her waist and boost her up to sit on the kitchen island. Her legs automatically lift to wrap around his hips, locking him into the vee of her legs. He completely forgets that his sister could be walking in the door at any second; all he can focus on is the fact that the woman he loves is here once again, as hot for him as he is for her. Jules' white sweater slips down her arms, and Sam's hand begins to skim up the soft skin of her thigh, pushing the hem of her dress upward, eager to touch her where he most wants to. Jules' hands are equally busy, tracing over his pecs and shoulders, running through his hair, keeping his head pressed up against her—not that he has any plans to move. Mouths plunder lips, and track over lips, jawlines, and necks as if seeking the only source of life-giving sustenance. Neither of them hears the door open, but Natalie's loudly gasped, "Oh!" definitely does get their attention. Jules jerks away from him as if she's been burned, sliding off the island and tugging her sweater back on.

"Okay. I'm going to go." Jules jumps to the obvious--albeit wrong--assumption of why a pretty girl is just walking right into Sam's apartment.

And she's running past Natalie out the apartment door before he can try to stop her, ignoring his call of her name. Sam takes a step after her, but has to stop when his phone beeps with an incoming text message. Picking it up, he reads "Report to SRU. 10-33." Sam grabs his keys and strides past his sister, tossing "I've got to go" over his shoulder.

Jules has really booked it, and is out of reach in the descending elevator before Sam can get there. He forgoes waiting for the elevator to return to his floor, and descends the flights of stairs rapidly. The blood pumping to his feet pounding down the steps does help to alleviate the problem of the erection that making out with Jules for even those few brief seconds has produced. Now, if only he can somehow negate the problem Natalie just created by interrupting them...that probably won't be so easy, he grimaces.

By unspoken mutual consent, what just happened in Sam's apartment is locked away by each of them when they meet again at SRU to learn that their Team Leader is the officer down. Not for the first time today, Sam curses Dr. Toth in his head. If not for that sadist, Ed wouldn't have been on that road to get shot--he'd have already been at the hospital with Sophie, because he would have left SRU the second she'd called to tell him she was in labor. He wouldn't have stuck around for those extra hours doing the requalifications that Commander Holleran said could only be done today due to Dr. Toth's schedule. Ed would have put his family first this time and not stayed with his team out of guilt that the requalification wouldn't count if the entire team didn't participate and that they wouldn't be cleared for duty until the whole process was completed.

"Any word from the Boss?" Sam asks Wordy as he approaches Winnie's desk, having just emerged from the locker room after changing into his uniform for the second time today. Spike looks up from obsessively examining the bandage on his hand. Sam resolutely doesn’t react when he hears Jules’ footsteps approaching from behind him.

"Not yet,” Wordy shakes his head. “Said for us to wait here until we have more information. Team Three’s out now, talking to the responding unis and trying to ID and track down the shooter."

Sam inserts his earpiece in time to hear Sarge asking for a health update on Ed from a doctor. Seven bullets, most of them to the chest and torso. Painful, but not as bad as it could have been. 

They exchange pained expressions at the doctor's report that the bullets that hit Ed's arm might have caused permanent nerve damage. Ed's a sniper. Nerve damage could well be a career-killer for him.

The team bores holes in the back of Toth's head with their eyes when he knocks Greg for promising to get Ed an update on his laboring wife.

"Wait," they hear Ed say. "I thought I saw something. There was someone else in the back seat. A woman. Military uniform."

"Military uniform?" repeats Greg. "Team--"

"On it, Boss," Jules reports. "Possible hostage."

Sam is already tapping on the phone buttons to dial Downsview—officially named Canadian Forces Base Toronto, though many locals have continued to use the old name out of nostalgia--the closest military facility to where Ed had been shot and the obvious first option for them to check. 

"This is Constable Sam Braddock of SRU. I need to speak with the on-duty security officer immediately," he issues the command to the private who answers the phone, his military past reasserting itself effortlessly, and getting the desired result almost immediately.

"This is Corporal Williams."

Sam repeats his introduction and asks if there has been an incident on the base. "Boss, there's a shooting at Downsview. Two soldiers hit, one female--she's missing. We're on our way." Sam's already moving toward the parking garage, gesturing for the rest of the team to follow. They hadn't explicitly talked about it while waiting for word and don't need to now. With Ed out of commission, Sam will run tactical. No one has to think about the decision, they just know it's best. Sam may still not be very skilled at negotiating, but he's always been damned good at tactics. On par with Ed himself in everything save years of experience--and even there Sam's ten years in the military make up a good bit of that difference.

At the base, the team seamlessly begins dividing up tasks. Wordy and Spike head off to check the security cameras and gate entry records, while Jules and Sam follow a soldier to the scene of the shooting, where the remaining victim is being treated.

"Jules, can we talk?" he asks the question after muting his mic. Toth had told Greg to keep his comm channel open, but hadn't expressly given the rest of the team the same directive, and Sam takes full advantage.

She mutes her own mic and responds, "I'm sorry, Sam. I didn't think to ask if you were seeing someone."

"Jules, it's just Natalie."

"She seems very nice." Sam wants to clutch his hair in frustration, much like how Sarge always rubs his own head when he's frustrated. She doesn't understand.

"My _sister_ Natalie. She showed up last night. Going to be staying with me for a while. Personal reasons."

"Maybe that's for the best."

"What does that mean?" but they've arrived at the crime scene and his query doesn't get answered as Jules reactivates her comm unit and begins asking the wounded soldier questions.

xxxx

The day is like a game of cat-and-mouse. Team Three tracks down the license plate from the shooter's car, to discover that it appears to have been stolen. By the time Sarge joins them at the base, Team One has figured out that the wounded soldier had to be aware that the now-stolen locker was being used to smuggle drugs and a base medic has told them where the subject might have taken her to get her injury treated. When they find Corporal Meg Kieffler, she reluctantly provides the name of the subject—Colin Potter—who happens to be her husband. Donna's drug squad connections identify Neil Cavell as the mastermind drug smuggler as well as giving the teams the probable location for tonight's meeting between the shooter and the drug lord.

"He shows up without the drugs," Team Three's Team Leader adds, "That's not going to go well."

"He's already shot three people today trying to keep this appointment," notes Wordy.

"Maybe he thinks the only way out now is to kill the bad guys first," Sam adds. Which isn’t really a bad strategy, just not one that is likely to work in real life the way it does in the movies.

"Our priority is to keep them apart," Jules interjects. "Colin's under the influence, emotionally impulsive, and he's up against guys who can aim."

"The drugs may not have ever been in the locker to begin with," Sam comments over the team's radio link after he and Wordy have left Dr. Qadir's house to head for the office tower.

"Go on, Sam," Greg encourages. Of them all, only Sam has military experience, much less any firsthand knowledge of Afghanistan, where the shooter had served as a war correspondent.

"Like Spike said back at the base: if you want to smuggle something into the country then using a dead soldier's locker to bypass border control and civilian customs inspections is a perfect way to do it. If the drug traffickers could set up that kind of smuggling pipeline and get people on the inside both in Afghanistan and here...there’s no way they'd just let it be a one-time deal to clear a debt."

Jules picks up on his line of thinking. "Just like how they got Colin hooked on the drugs to begin with--a favor for a favor."

"Yeah," agrees Sam. "Maybe they sent him a picture showing the drugs in the locker’s cutouts to 'prove' the shipment was coming, or maybe they just told him...either way, I don't think the drugs were ever really sent. I’d say it was just a ploy to set up this exact situation. Colin rushes in, meets with them all panicked about the drugs going missing, swearing that something must have happened in transit, begging for another chance to clear his debt--"

"So they tell him, 'Okay, we'll send a new shipment to replace this one, and one more to cover our inconvenience," Wordy proffers an all-too-likely scenario.

"Maybe both would arrive without incident, or maybe one or both would have the same problem," Spike continues the team brainstorm. "And it just snowballs from there until there's no way for Colin--or Meg, either--to get out. They're trapped. An endless cycle of modern-day slavery."

At their destination, Teams One and Three easily divide up responsibilities. Donna points out the target executive lounge, and Spike promises "I've got it covered," when Sam notes that they'll need to know where the subject is within the room.

"Black wall," reports Spike after locating the subject using a long-arm body heat sensor from his location on the building floor beneath the lounge.

Waiting outside the room with Jules and Sarge, Sam acknowledges the information with the team's standard, "Copy that." To the teammates standing next to him, he directs, "Let's take down the door." Aiming his MP5 at the door, Sam shoots out both hinges, then steps aside to allow Sarge room to kick the door down and toss in a flashbang, with Jules flinging in a second one. All three of them enter the room, seeking out their subject through the clouds of smoke.

"Spike! He went through a door that wasn't on the map!" Sam calls out.

"I'm on it," the other man promises, dropping his equipment and gripping the MP5 hooked to his tactical vest as he starts to run. Wordy likewise abandons his hallway sentry post and moves to find a perch where he can hopefully get eyes on their subject. It works--within just a minute or two, Colin Potter is trapped on the curved staircase between Spike on the level below, and Greg, Sam, and Jules on the stairs above him.

"I've got vantage and concealment," Wordy reports.

"Wordy, lay low. Spike, you're Sierra," directs Sam.

The agitated man paces around on the stairs, mumbling, and ignoring the sergeant's attempts to start a dialogue.

"Body language...looks like he's going to jump," Wordy passes along what he sees from his elevated position.

"I know what happened today," Greg keeps trying to connect with Colin. "I know you were trying to do what you thought you had to do." Though primarily directed at Colin, the words are really for his team, too. So many things today would never have happened if Greg had just had faith in himself and not brought Toth in to hammer his people. They don't need the words, though. Like they'd told Donna earlier in the day, they know Sarge was just doing what he thought was right."

"Boss, he's past negotiation." It's not an easy thing for Jules to say, but Colin pointing his gun at Greg and Sam, not wanting to talk, plus his unbalanced mental and emotional state...none of it bodes well. She's the Boss' secondary in negotiations for a good reason, so if she doesn't think talk can possibly work...

"He shot a cop and a soldier," Spike observes, not moving from his ready stance with his MP5 pointing steadily up at the subject. "I don't think he's seeing the happy ending here."

"Boss, if we want to stop a suicide, the only way is a double-drop," Sam offers his tactical opinion.

"Staging area looks good," Wordy reports, looking upward toward a higher level of the building, where a landing is situated directly above where the subject stands.

"A double-drop, ten floors up?" Greg openly expresses his doubt.

"I'm not seeing another option," Sam reiterates his point.

"We'd have him on the ground before he knew what hit him," says Jules. 

Sam’s case is a powerful one. So many years of life-and-death military experience is held by this younger man, so if Sam doesn't see a better alternative, it's something Greg has to take seriously. Still...

"So I gotta risk my team to save the guy who shot my TL seven times?"

"It's your call, Boss," Jules' voice is calm and soothing. Yes, it is his call. But he's long had the practice of listening to his subordinates when they have more experience in something than he does.

"Okay, Sam. Let's do it." And with the green light to proceed, Sam and Jules both back up few steps, and when they’re out of the subject’s sightline turn and run upward to the gear left behind when the subject had bolted.

Testing his zipline and making sure that Jules is doing the same thing, Sam quietly instructs the Boss, "You've got to keep him still."

"I'm going to try to keep his focus on me," Greg assures.

"Just give us the word," Jules says.

Greg wonders if he's ever felt so much pressure as he does right now. He's already had one of his people shot today, and if this goes badly that number could jump to three.

The team does not hear the exchange between Dr. Toth and Commander Holleran about the probable risks to this plan, but they do hear Dr. Toth strongly stating, "Sergeant Parker, I can't let you do this. Your team was a breath away from being disbanded. You're risking their lives to prove something to me."

It's only knowing that the life of the subject hangs in the balance that keeps the listening officers from reacting to Toth's bald statement. Only a few hours after the requalification process had ended, and the decision had already essentially been made to break up the team?

"Are you kidding me?" Greg scoffs. "This is the job. This is what we do. Team One, anyone wants to stand down, you can. Spike?"

"Present and on-board," the tech expert's tone is solid and resolved. 

"Wordy?"

"Not going anywhere," he promises.

"Jules?"

She's calm and confident. "I'm good."

"Sam?"

"Nowhere else I'd rather be." Sam speaks the words to the Boss, but has his blue eyes locked onto Jules' brown ones as he says them.

"There's your answer, Dr. Toth." 

"Copy that, Sergeant Parker."

Sam and Jules stand on a platform right next to the railing, ziplines securely anchored, left hands anchored around each other's forearms. Gazes are locked, breaths come slow and steady.

"Three, two one. Go, go, go!" Wordy hisses, after he's guided his teammates into the right position, and they both jump up and over the railing. It's an exhilarating tandem freefall, punctuated by a shower of glass fragments when the subject raises his gun and fires a pair of shots directly upward. Thankfully, though, his drug-affected aim only hits a skylight panel and not either of the descending SRU officers. With the subject in custody, and Donna's team having captured the drug lord, the team heads to the hospital to check on Ed and his family; Greg has a stop at SRU to make first, though he wishes he didn't have to. At the same time, however, he wants--needs--to know what the day's outcome is.

Wordy, Spike, Sam, and Jules wait in the hospital hallway for news, none of them able to stay put in the waiting room. Jules paces back and forth restlessly; Sam wishes he could do likewise, but forces himself to stay leaned against the wall instead. Finally, they see a wheelchair turn the corner, pushed by Clark Lane, with Ed sitting in the chair holding a pink-wrapped bundle. They're instantly moving closer to look at the new family member, relieved that she's arrived safely and that Ed seems to also be okay, considering the ripped-off shirt sleeve and blood-stained bandages around his forearm. They're so focused on the baby that they almost don't notice when their sergeant arrives.

It is quick and subtle, and would have been so easy to miss. In fact, no one else does notice. Greg wouldn't have caught it, either, except that he is facing just the right way, looking at just the right angle and at the exact moment it happens. For a mere instant, Sam's fingers reach out and briefly squeeze Jules'. Just for a moment, and then she steps forward for a closer view of newborn Isabelle Lane, who is now cradled in her older brother Clark's arms as their father is finally wheeled away for treatment. Nothing else about Jules’ or Sam’s body language or facial expressions betrays what Greg thinks he just saw.

Can they really be so reckless? Only hours after those brutal interviews with Dr. Toth? Interviews during which both of them had been questioned harshly by the psychologist on their decision to have an illicit workplace relationship, as well as how and why it had ended. Less than an hour ago, Toth warned Parker explicitly that any resumption of a personal relationship between Sam and Jules--in violation of the team's newly announced probation-will result in immediate disciplinary action and reassignment-for both of them as well as for Greg himself. Can they possibly even consider risking their careers again for a bit of romance? Especially given the hell Toth just put both of them through, rehashing the first time they'd made that choice? Greg doesn’t think so--hopes fervently against it. He knows how important the team is to Jules--it’s why she broke things off when he and Eddie had discovered the affair just prior to her return to the team after recovering from being shot. The team has always been her family, more so than the actual blood relatives back in Medicine Hat who Jules hasn't seen in years.

And he knows the team has been crucial for Sam, too. Everything he saw and did as an army sniper-much more than the team is surely aware of even with what details Sam has shared during hot calls and debriefs-has weighed heavily on the soul of a man who is more sensitive than his military persona lets on. There were times when Greg has been sure that being part of the SRU is the only thing that has kept Sam Braddock from ending up as yet another returned soldier who did something to become the subject of a hot call--either that or yet another statistic of a veteran who couldn't cope with coming home and ended up seeking and finding a permanent solution to their pain. Just like Darren Kovacs did two years ago. Sam nearly quit SRU because of that call-just like he'd left Special Forces after accidentally killing his best friend. Being part of this team, Greg is convinced, has been Sam's salvation.

So with all those factors, will either Jules or Sam really risk losing the jobs that are such crucial elements to their lives? Greg doesn't think so. They got a pass the first time, because Jules had been out on medical leave when he and Ed got clued in about the fraternization. When she had ended the relationship just before coming back to the team, neither of the team's leaders had seen a reason to officially report the rule violation to Commander Holleran. Dr. Toth had only known about it because Greg had mentioned it in his private notes, notes that had been used to hammer both parties today. A repeat rule violation, while both Sam and Jules are on the team together...no, forgiveness won’t come so easily a second time. Maybe--just maybe--his eyes have played tricks on him, Greg tries to convince himself. After all, he’s been awake for even longer than usual, sat through all of the brutal sessions his team endured with Toth, and then after all of that has dealt with the stresses of his closest friend and colleague Ed being shot, the hot call, the tough decision to go with Sam's tactical plan for taking down the subject against Toth's judgment of the maneuver's risks, and finally finding out the psychiatrist's recommendation about the team's future. His mind could well be making him see things that aren't really there. So it is possible that he hasn't in fact seen anything more than an incidental contact between two people in a confined space. Possible, but likely?

Greg turns his attention back to his old friend's newborn daughter. He doesn’t know for sure, and has more than enough on his plate right now without going out looking for potential problems. Ed may well have delayed treatment of his wounds for longer than was wise, just to be with Sophie during her labor, and Greg can only hope and pray that the doctor's dire warning about the possibility of permanent nerve damage in Ed's arm won't be proven true. But even in a best-case scenario, Ed will be out for months recovering. How will the team function without their tactical leader…?

xxx

"Probably time to take her back to Mom," Wordy suggests, after the team has fussed over the baby for a good while.

"You guys want to say hi?" Clark asks.

"Is your mom up to a visit?”

Clark shrugs, which makes little Izzy squirm in his arms as she's jostled.

The team ends up escorting Clark and Izzy to Sophie's room, where she waves them inside as soon as she sees them.

"What happened?" bursts out of her lips in a rush. “How did Eddie get shot?”

After an exchange of glances with the rest of his team, Greg gives Sophie a very abbreviated synopsis of the day’s events, finishing up with, "Eddie just got taken off to surgery. They're looking after him and I'm sure they'll give you an update just as soon as it's done. We'll miss Ed while he's out, but please make sure he knows that we'll try to manage without him." The sergeant looks to one side. "Sam, you did great filling in as TL today. Think you're up to taking on the role for a while longer?”

Sam blinks. "Wow. Thanks. Yeah, Boss." Then, "You sure?"

"Yeah, I am. You did good today, Sam. Everyone is going home safe tonight. I'm sure Eddie will say the same when we let him know what happened today."

"Samtastic!" Spike crows. "Sam is the man!"

The new temporary TL for Team One rolls his eyes and shakes his head at the techie's enthusiasm, but all the same there's a small grin now fixed to Sam's face.

xxx

After saying goodbye, the team heads outside, eager to get back to SRU, shower, change, and head home after an incredibly long and hellish day. But first, there's something they all need to know.

"So, what happened with Toth?"

"We'll talk about that back in debrief," Greg delays answering. "I know it's late, and we’re all tired, physically, mentally, and emotionally. But we're going to be off duty tomorrow, so let's get this done tonight rather than having it hang over us to do later."

Since everyone is impatient to be able to leave, debrief is much shorter and less contentious than has often been the case. It helps that no one really has any issues with what anyone else did or didn't do. They're all relieved when they get a call from Sophie that Ed came through surgery just fine and that the doctor is optimistic about a full recovery.

Finally, Jules asks, "Boss, what did Toth say? The Commander?"

"Team One is cleared for duty." The smiles that start to appear dim when Greg adds, "Conditionally."

Wordy frowns. "Conditionally? What does that mean?"

"We're on probation. The brass and Dr. Toth are going to be watching us closely. Every call will be examined in detail."

They all understand: they're under a microscope. Those examinations will probably be just as brutal as the psychological assessments Toth did of each one of them that morning. Each decision, each choice, each mistake...it'll all be reviewed as intensely as the most hard-assed SIU investigator would ever think of doing. Anything less than perfection...

"Look," Greg speaks solemnly. "Each one of you is a phenomenal officer. Team One has been the best for a long time for a very good reason. I know that won't change. We'll get through this. Just do your jobs like you always do, and it’ll be fine. Now, go home. Rest. All of you."

He signals Jules with his eyes to stay behind, and verbally asks the same of Sam. Once the three are alone, the sergeant addresses his subordinates. "Toth will be looking at both of you in particular."

"Why?" Jules asks.

"Your past history--"

"What!" Sam bites out. "Do they not trust us to do our jobs? Two damned years of being on the same team with no problems at all—nothing—doesn’t that count for something?"

There really isn’t anything Greg can say. Sam has a valid point. He and Jules have been completely professional since their breakup, and they shouldn’t be placed under excessive scrutiny for such an old closed issue. None of his team should be put under the magnifying glass the way they will be for as long as the probation lasts. Ed’s certainly not the only cop to have marital difficulties, and Wordy’s not the only one to be tired and stressed from the burden of being his family’s provider. None of it means they can’t do their jobs, either. But none of that is going to count for anything with the military psychologist. Greg is sure that he’ll look at all of them critically, but most likely Jules and Sam above all, especially with his confident pronouncement that the pair still hold feelings for each other that Toth clearly believes go beyond those of teammates, and which he just as obviously is convinced will lead them into trouble sooner or later.

“I know that all of you will do your jobs as excellently as always,” Greg finally says. “I’m just sorry that this team has to bear the burden of my misguided decision to bring in the outside evaluator.”

“You were just doing what you thought was best, Boss. We know that.”

The smile Greg offers to his honorary daughter is more of a grimace. “You give me too much credit, Julianna. And now everyone will be under close observation for it. And Sam, what you said earlier, about your work performance speaking for itself…I agree that it should, but unfortunately I don’t think it will with Dr. Toth. I know it’s unnecessary, but he did make a point of saying that if the two of you ever cross the line again, it will mean disciplinary measures and reassignment for both of you, and for me. He’s being absurd, I know, but I did have to inform you both. Now,” he brushes the whole topic away. “You’ve both had tough days. Go home and relax. I’ll see you the day after tomorrow, alright?”

xxx 

It is in a comfortable yet charged silence that Sam and Jules ride in the elevator up to the floor for his apartment. As per their old habit when they'd been secretly dating a couple years ago, they first drove to a parking garage where Jules parked her jeep before climbing into Sam's car for the rest of the trip. The sexual frisson between them has been low-key all through the afternoon and evening, but they've both known it was there. Now, alone, they'll see whether they can and will pick things up where they left them that morning, or not. Neither one has spoken since leaving SRU. They’ve both been using the time to think things through. While not a total surprise, considering how Toth had hammered each of them that morning, the stark pronouncement of the consequences of another breakage of departmental rules was sobering to the couple. They’ll be risking both of their jobs—and the boss’s too—if they rekindle things and get caught again. Can they afford the professional danger of doing this? Can they live with the personal consequences of _not_ choosing this course?

Sam opens his front door and pokes his head inside cautiously. "Nat? You there?"

When there is no answer, he pushes the door open all the way to enter, with Jules following close behind him. The apartment is completely quiet, and empty. Jules notices a bottle of wine and piece of paper sitting on the glass coffee table and goes to investigate.

**Sammy, I'm sorry I barged in this morning. Sorry. Gosh, so sorry! I'm a terrible sister. Sorry if I gave her a wrong idea. Brain bleach, I promise. I'll make myself scarce tonight. We can talk tomorrow and work out a signal or something. Sorry. Way to go! xo Nat**

"I guess we scared her away," Jules hands the note to Sam to read.

He doesn't reply; his only action is lifting his hands up to clasp around her biceps. "Are you sure about this?' It's a loaded question, and Sam's tone and somber facial expression say so. The very fact that Jules came to his apartment this morning--that she's here again now--can only mean that she wants to rekindle their relationship as much as Sam does. But is she really okay with them sneaking around again now, when she wasn't okay with it two years ago? It will kill him to let her walk away again tonight, but better now than later on if the secrecy gets to be too much to bear.

"There is nowhere else I'd rather be," Jules looks up at him, heart in her eyes, willing him to see and believe everything that she feels. Her choice of words--precisely what he'd said to her only hours earlier just before they did the double-drop--is deliberate. She knew exactly what Sam was promising her--even as he had answered the Boss' question on his commitment to the tactical plan--and she now responds in kind. All in.

In an echo of that morning, Sam's head dips down to claim a gentle kiss, and another. Then, with a soft smile that he's only ever given to her, Sam wraps his hand around hers and leads her into his bedroom, closing the door behind them and shutting the rest of the world out. They stand beside Sam's bed for unknown minutes, savoring each other's warmth as they embrace; Jules being soothed by the rhythmic beating of Sam's heart next to her ear, Sam breathing in the delicate yet rich fragrance that was always and only his Julianna. While the morning's encounter had been uncontrolled and explosive, now it is soft and slow. The teasing removal of each piece of clothing is relished, every rediscovered taste and touch heals the fissures in both their hearts and souls. Samuel Braddock and Julianna Callaghan are exactly where they want to be, and while the future may be unknown, they'll face it together.


	2. 4.3 Run Jamie Run

"Excuse me!" a blonde young woman completely ignores what the SRU's duty dispatcher, Winnie Camden, says to her. She is on a mission and not to be delayed by trivialities.

"It's okay, I'm with the band,” she says with a wave of one hand as she passes the desk.

Winnie's "I need you to sign in, please," is also disregarded.

"Jules!" Natalie Braddock greets the one person in the workout area that she knows. The others are somewhat familiar, thanks to the pictures displayed in Sam's apartment, but Natalie hasn't had a chance to meet any of them them yet. But her mission to her brother's workplace today is providing the perfect opportunity.

"Natalie." Jules’ inner _“Oh, crap, with a side of bacon,”_ doesn’t show in her expression or voice as she pulls out her earbuds and gets up from the bench she's been sitting on while using the small arm weights. 

"So, this is where it all happens," Natalie glances around at the workout area.

"Oh, yeah. Some of it, anyway." Inwardly, Jules is scrambling to figure out how—if—she and Sam can emerge from his sister’s unexpected visit unscathed. The team is sure to be curious about the sister Sam has never mentioned, and Jules has spent enough time around Natalie at Sam’s apartment to know by now that she doesn’t have much in the way of inhibitions or filters.

"Is Sam around?"

Jules peeks inconspicuously at the rest of the team, who have all looked up from their own workout routines at the unexpected and unfamiliar visitor's entrance. "Hey, guys, this is Natalie Braddock, Sam's sister." The others come over to the two women and begin introducing themselves.

"Hi, I'm Greg. Nice to meet you."

"Hey, Natalie. Ed. How are you?"

"Hey. Wordy."

"Hi," Natalie replies.

"Spike. How you doing?"

Natalie repeats the name. "Spike."

"Yep."

"You don't look very spiky."

"Yeah. Um. Well, my hair. Used to be--" It was pretty funny to the others how flustered Spike got when being teased by a pretty woman. And Natalie is definitely good looking. Just like Sam, she's been blessed by the gene pool lottery with long blonde hair, rich blue eyes, flawless peach skin, and a stunningly bright smile. 

"What's your real name?"

"Michaelangelo."

"Your mom had high hopes."

"Yeah, yeah. She still does."

"I like it."

"Sam," Wordy asks, speaking to the teammate none of them noticed has just walked into the room. "Where you been hiding your sister?" Sam doesn't answer, but it doesn't escape notice that the smile on his face looks rather forced.

Into the silence, Natalie says, "Oh, no. I've just been on the road. So, hey, I just came by to borrow the car. Job hunting. Is that okay?" Natalie's bubbly flirtatious demeanor shifts to one of near uncertainty as she addresses her brother.

"Yeah, sure." Sam's head shakes from side to side, seeming to dismiss his sister's concern.

"Thank you. You are the best." Natalie steps forward to give Sam a hug, then swings to stand beside him with her arm around his shoulder. She smiles winsomely at Team One; Sam's smile, by contrast is more of a grimace. "He's letting me crash with him for a few months while I get settled here." She picks at a speck of lint on the front of Sam's uniform and adds, "Even though I'm pretty much cramping his style."

"Come on, I'll show you around," Sam hustles his sister out of the workout area with obvious haste, darting just the quickest glance in Jules' direction as he does so.

The rest of the guys on the team exchange amused glances. It was clear to Greg that Sam isn't a happy camper right now, but why, Greg's not entirely sure. He--the team--had learned in the aftermath of the spree shooting at the museum that Sam had had a younger sister who'd been killed in a hit-and-run accident in front of him when they'd been children. He doesn't have much to say about his mother, but Greg knows that Sam's father has come up as a point of frustration in the past, when the General wasn't been willing to accept his son's departure from the military--or so Greg had gathered after Sam's return from visiting his parents after Jules had broken off their relationship. But other than that, Sam just doesn't mention his family at all, and certainly hasn't talked about a second sister. Greg supposes that some siblings just aren't close--Ed and his brother Roy are prime examples of that. But, if that were the case, then it is all the more surprising that Sam has let her stay with him for any length of time, much less the "few months" that Natalie just alluded to.

After the two Braddocks have vanished from sight, Team One naturally begins talking about them.

"Yeah, I guess having a sister living with him would cramp Samtastic's style," Spike grinned.

"So says the man who still lives in his parents' basement," Wordy shot back quickly. "You've got no room to be commenting on Sam's love life given your own lack of one."

"So, Jules, how do you happen to know Sam's sister when none of us knew about her at all?" Ed probes.

"Ed, are you feeling left out of the information loop? Have you been slacking off on your job as my social secretary?" Jules tosses the comment over her shoulder at the Team Leader, referencing a time several years earlier when he'd stolen her phone right out of her hand and proceeded to introduce himself in that capacity to the Scott, her short-term semi-boyfriend at the time.

"Clearly," he snorts. "So...how'd you meet her?"

"Natalie didn't bring a lot with her when she came to town, and being a guy, Sam was clueless about the best places to get what she needed at. Being that I am a female, he begged my help, and I, out of the goodness of my heart, assisted him. Hence, I was introduced to Natalie."

"And were you placed under a vow of silence?"

"No, Sam didn't ask me not to mention his sister. But he didn't ask me _to_ mention her, either. I figured he could and would whenever it came up, which it just did."

It is a perfectly logical and rational explanation, but Greg doesn’t buy it in the least, though the others appear to. An experienced traveler like Miss Natalie Braddock seems to be would have no trouble finding the right places in a city the size of Toronto to get anything she might happen to want, or else just order things online. She wouldn't need to have her brother beg a teammate for help. And unless he is totally crazy, he doesn’t think Jules was all that happy to see Natalie walk into SRU—for sure, Sam wasn’t. Jules’ voice and demeanor had been just the slightest bit tense. Greg thought that Natalie might have flicked her gaze between Sam and Jules when she’d talked about cramping her brother’s style.

xxxxxx

A fly on the wall of the hallway in SRU would have gotten quite an earful. Fortunately for Sam Braddock and Jules Callaghan, their sergeant was _not_ an insect.

"We talked about a few days, and now it's a couple months!" Sam spins around to face Natalie, annoyance clear in every line of his body. He's actually understating the situation, given that Natalie came to Toronto more than five months ago.

"No!" Natalie reacts defensively. "It was until I found a job, which I am trying to do. I'm trying to get my life together, so that I can move on somewhere. I really appreciate you being there for me."

Sam is more focused on what Natalie had nearly done than on her expression of gratitude. "That thing about cramping my style? Just watch what you say."

"What do you mean?'" and it's clear to him that Natalie doesn't have a clue how incriminating her words a few minutes ago had really been.

"It could give people the wrong impression."

"The wrong impression?"

"Yeah. About Jules. That we're involved--which we're _not--_ because that could get me fired! Okay?"

"Okay. So she doesn't come around for sleepovers sometimes?"

"Officially, she never has."

"Gotcha. No sleepovers. And that is not her shampoo in the shower, or her toothbrush on the sink."

Sam just looks at his sister in resignation. He hopes he can be confident that Natalie will keep her mouth shut and not run the risk of spilling his and Jules' secret again now that she knows the importance of doing so, but with Natalie, you just never know.

"So, can I have your car keys?"

Okay, so his annoyance hasn't really abated after all. With an inner snarl, Sam pulls the keys out of his pocket and slaps them down onto Natalie's outstretched palm.

"Thanks," she smiles as if he's handed them over with a joyful song-and-dance routine. "Oh, and I had to use your Paypal account. Hope that's okay."

"You what?" Sam stares at her in disbelief.

"Clothes. Online. For my job interviews." Finally picking up on the fact that her brother is really getting angry with her now, Natalie rushes on with her explanation. "Nobody's going to take me seriously if I don't dress the part. I will pay you back this time, I promise."

Sam's lips press tightly together into a thin line. He's heard that one before, more than once. "No, keep the clothes," Sam answers with a tight smile. "They're a gift."

"Really?" Natalie smiles at him again in delight.

"Yeah. Just be out of my apartment by the time I get home tonight," and with that, Sam strides away to rejoin his team. He doesn't see the way she watches him go, with a suddenly forlorn expression on her face.

Already dressed in his uniform, Sam is able to avoid the rest of his team for a few minutes while they complete their own post-workout showers and changing.

"Armed robbery, Karak International headquarters, Bloor Street," Winnie announces after triggering the lights and claxon to announce a hot call. "Shots fired. Single gunman. White male, late teens-early twenties. Handgun. It’s some kind of company meeting.”

"It's a robbery?" Wordy tosses the question over his shoulder as the team gets moving. 

"He hijacked the meeting and stole wallets," Winnie replies, but doesn’t know any more.

As they follow the team from the SRU lobby down to the equipment and weapons cages, Sam and Jules have a quietly intense conversation. 

"So, your sister."

"She wants to 'belong somewhere'," Sam scoffs. "Anywhere she just flashes that smile and gets whatever she wants."

"And that pisses you off," Jules decides.

"You think?"

“Cause you've worked your ass off for everything you've got and she's actually enjoying life. You're jealous."

"I'm jealous?"

"I'm just sayin'," Jules follows Sam into the weapons cage and they both start pulling their gear. "She grows up on a military base. Her brother's the poster boy for perfection. She's just trying to figure it out, make up her own rules. Maybe you resent her freedom."

"You profiling me?"

"No, I'm having a conversation."

"Her showing up here--" Sam falls silent as Spike and Wordy walk past the cage on their way to the basement level garage, then continues, "She has no clue the damage she could do, and I don't just mean you and me."

"You mean the boss."

"If he knows and doesn't tell..."

"He could lose his job," she finishes the statement.

"Yeah. It's the deal. We're on probation. We don't get to make a mistake."

"Did you make that clear to Nat?" queries Jules.

"It's not happening again," Sam speaks with absolute certainty, and nudges past Jules to exit the cage.

"How long can we do this?" she asks. He looks back over his shoulder at her, but doesn't answer. Because there really isn’t an answer. Every day they live with the risk that their secret may somehow get spilled. How they might handle that is not something that they’ve sat down and discussed. Perhaps a bit too much of hiding their heads in the ground like ostriches, but the worst-case scenario is not something they’re willing to plan out—the superstition that admitting to a fear will make it come to pass, probably. But while they've accepted the reality that their love has to remain a secret, neither really likes it. This isn't something that they should have to keep private. They should be able to share it with those closest to them.

They're usually paired up in the same SUV, so it doesn't raise a red flag with anyone when they ride together again today. They've made the vow to each other more than once that being together is what they want--what they need. _"There's nowhere else I'd rather be."_ Sam had said it just before they'd done the double drop to capture Colin Potter, and Jules had repeated it to him in his apartment a couple hours later, just before they'd sought the privacy of his bedroom for reunion sex that had been more amazing than anything he could have ever dreamed of. They haven't done anything to betray themselves this time--they don't think so, at least. Or if they have, it hasn't been enough to provoke a reaction. But as Jules just said, “ _How long can we keep doing this?”_

At the Karak International headquarters, Greg starts talking to witnesses, while Wordy and Sam head for the back stairwell that the subject had used to exit the building. 

"He could still be in the vicinity. Boss, we'll go coordinate with the unis," Sam announces.

"Copy that."

Jules is privately a bit amused that Sarge is clueless when the bartender informs him that the subject was familiar to him, and points to the logo the young man had inserted into the Powerpoint presentation as if it explained everything. Which it does, really.

"Jamie Dee," she says.

"He was livecasting," adds the bartender. Greg repeats the word with an obvious lack of comprehension.

"Hey, Spike," Jules turns and looks toward their techie, who has set up his laptop on a nearby tall table. "You got a picture?"

"If this is our guy, I can get you a whole gallery." And he does. The internet search brings up a plethora of pictures of a vaguely similar young man, in a wide range of hairstyles and hair colors, varying amounts of facial hair, and the presence or lack of hats or glasses. The young man is clearly a chameleon, and Jules says so.

She, Spike, and Greg are discussing Jamie Dee's past crimes and recent twists when Wordy and Sam return to report that he's nowhere to be seen, and had ditched the wallets outside, but taken the security guards' guns and the Karak CEO's fancy sports car. Sam gives the details to Winnie to send out an APB.

"With me," Ed says, gesturing for Sam to follow him. Wordy and Jules follow as soon as the team gets word that the car has been spotted. Spike and Greg remain at the scene of the armed robbery to continue investigating. When Jamie Dee posts about a party at a local hostel, the team converges there. 

“We’ve got an audience here,” Sam reports. The crowd outside the hostel seems to only be growing, and all of these people couldn’t have come from inside. Jules puts in a call to Winnie for more uniformed cops to help control the crowd.

“Sam, Jules, on white door. Wordy, with me on black,” Ed gives the team orders, and they start moving toward the building to begin searching. But that plan goes to hell in a handbasket when the crowd starts surging into the building. Gunshots fired and an out-of-control crowd, it’s all bringing back memories for Greg of the day that Ed nearly quit SRU, when Jules and Spike had both been caught up in the mob outside the courthouse after the verdict was announced in Officer Greeley’s trial.

xxxxxx

"Sam, with me!" Ed summons him when Jamie Dee bolts from the hostel in a stolen police car, taking a hostage with him.

"A police cruiser. Unbelievable," Ed mutters during their pursuit.

"This guy's a brat. A parasite. Thinks that just because he can work the charm, the world owes him a good time. Reminds me of someone," he adds when Ed takes his eyes off the road to give him a judging look. Ed doesn't say anything else and lets it drop for the moment. He really doesn't need to ask who Sam's thinking of now. Even though he's not as skilled a profiler as Greg or Jules, Ed's been around the block often enough to know what's what. Or in this case, who's who. He can understand the problem Sam is facing: a sibling you feel obligated to protect even if you don’t have anything in common but blood, or when you don’t like what they’re doing. He can relate, given his own brother. Even Jules can sympathize—she hasn’t had much to do with her own family in years, since their lack of respect for her choice in career drove a wedge between them. Ed saw the look the two of them exchanged right before Sam hustled his sister away from the team, and hopes Jules was able to say something helpful to Sam on their drive to the first call.

As usual in his role as team sergeant, Greg divides his attention between the various subgroups of his team. Wordy is searching the hostel for the package Jamie Dee may have left behind, Ed chases the subject but loses him, Spike investigates a video Jamie just posted online, and Sam takes care of the hostage that Jamie left behind. Sam isn't displaying his usual calm demeanor as much today as he normally does. Clearly Sam doesn't have much patience for Dana's obvious hero-worship of Jamie Dee, her awe of his coming ‘grand finale’, or how she scoffs at the police she feels he's making fools of.   
  
It would be clear to anyone, but is especially so to Greg, that having his sister turn up at SRU that morning still has Sam more than a bit on-edge. Greg doesn't have to be a top-notch profiler to figure out when Sam calls Jamie Dee an entitled rich kid, that he's thinking of his sister. His initial read on the sibling relationship, just from the brief observation that morning, is that Sam is the stereotypical responsible firstborn child while Natalie is the free-spirited younger sibling. _Plenty of room to clash right there,_ he thinks. And Greg remembers accurately, Sam only has a one-bedroom apartment; if Natalie has been staying with him for months, then it's likely in the bedroom that Sam would have vacated for her--willingly enough for a short stay, but surely less so now that things look to have shifted into an open-ended informal sub-lease situation.

“Dana’s phone,” Sam hands it off to Jules.

“Thanks. Spike, we got her phone.”

“What’s your read, Sam?” asks Greg.

“She’s a kid with a fantasy crush. She’s fallen for a hero image of Jamie.”

“You think she knows what this grand finale is?”

Sam shook his head. “No. It sounds like she’s telling the truth.”

“Grand finale,” Ed muses. That sounds more than a little ominous to all of them.

Sitting in the command truck with Spike, Greg looks at all the information coming in, trying to put together an accurate profile of this young renegade. The federal cop they talked to pegged Jamie as a narcissist and rich kid gone bad, but that just doesn’t feel right. If Jamie Dee was truly self-centered, would he be worried about the hostage he’d taken being accused of collaborating with him? Would he have driven across town after the Karak holdup to leave money for the hostel’s director, with thanks for her help? 

Ed, Wordy, and Sam question the hostel’s manager, Marie Alvarez, who recognizes Jamie Dee as Darcy Dunleavy, a boy she’d known back in Vancouver and had suspected was abused by his foster family.

"Seventeen? He's just a kid," Sam murmurs, after Winnie pulls up the kid’s official child services file.

"You might have called this one wrong," Ed tells Sam. And it seems to be true. When Spike follows the trail of electronic breadcrumbs, Sage—the one online follower Jamie has connected with and considers his only friend, the girl to whom he’s poured out his soul and heard her own secrets of abuse in return—is revealed to really be the stepson of a wealthy businessman—a teenage boy, and not a girl at all.

“I don’t get it. A guy that smart, how could he not have suspected something?” Ed wonders.

“Growing up, nobody wanted him. Finding a place to belong…” Jules’ words are as much directed to Sam regarding his sister as they are about Darcy.

“When you finally let someone get close…” Greg adds.

Sam continues the train of thought, “Trust someone…”

“Maybe you see what you want to see,” finishes Jules. “And he’s just seventeen,” she looks toward Greg, sitting beside her in the SUV. Young and inexperienced, how could Darcy be expected to be so suspicious of someone whose story seems to so closely mirror his own?

Ed hands out orders as the team heads into the latest scene of the day. "Jules, you talk. Wordy, cover her. Sam, you're Sierra. Take the catwalk. We've got to wrap this up before the truth hits." The truth: that Darcy has been catfished by a fellow teen boy, for reasons they can only begin to guess at right now. They can’t let Darcy kill an innocent man based on lies told by a girl who doesn’t really exist. Each of them can only hope and pray that Darcy can be stopped before he becomes a threat that Sam has to take down.

Sam unpacks his Remi and heads to the auditorium catwalk as directed. Finger on the trigger, with Darcy centered in the scope of his rifle, Sam waits to see what will happen. He hopes the order for Scorpio doesn't come. Shooting a teenage boy who's been abused and now deceived...no, Darcy isn't what Sam had originally thought him to be. And if Darcy isn't what he seems, then is Natalie? It’s a thought that bears thinking about, but not here and not now—he’s got to maintain his focus just in case Jules can’t connect with Darcy and convince him to give up his hostage, gun, and flight. Thankfully, and in testament to skills Sam has always been a bit in awe of, Jules does succeed. It’s with no small measure of relief that Sam lifts his rifle off the rail he’d been supporting it with and heads back down to rejoin his team, while Jules sits on the stage and talks more with Darcy.

Xxxxxx

“Good talk,” Sam tells Jules on their way back to SRU.

“Thanks. I’m glad you were there watching, but I’m happy that Sarge didn’t have to give you the order to shoot.”

“Me, too.”

Jules has let Sam drive them this evening, and reaches to tap his arm and point to the volume switch for his comm unit. When they’re both muted, she continues,

“What’s up?”

Sam’s quiet for a while, and Jules lets the silence stretch out the way Sam needs. She knows that he can’t be forced or rushed into talking if he doesn’t want to, but if she lets him know she’s willing to listen, and gives him time, then he usually does open up with her.

“He reminds me of Nat, in a way. Trying to find his place, somewhere to be safe. Yeah, he picked a bad way to do it, but with his past, I guess he couldn’t see other options.”

“Maybe Natalie doesn’t, either. That could be something you could give her—show her better ways to do things, and have a better relationship.”

“I don’t know,” Sam sighs heavily. 

“Sam?”

“I told her to get out by tonight.”

Jules’ eyes widen in shock, but she doesn’t—can’t—say anything.

“Maybe you’re right, about me being a bit jealous of her. My dad had my future planned out for me the day I was born, but Nat has always gotten to do her own thing. And she might not be as young as Darcy, but she’s still young, and she hasn’t seen the stuff you and I have.”

“You’re mad at her about this morning, too, aren’t you?” It isn’t really a question, though. She can’t blame Sam for that—not when she’s irritated with Natalie for that very reason herself. That kind of recklessness is what could get their secret exposed for a second time, and that’s something she doesn’t even want to think about happening. Jules had forced herself to walk away from Sam once—there is no way it will be possible for her to do that again, or that Sam to let her go, either.

“Yeah, I am,” Sam admits.

Thankful that the SUV doesn’t have interior cameras, Jules reaches out her hand, slides it up his arm, and tugs his hand away from the steering wheel. It’s not the safest thing in the world for him to be driving one-handed, she knows, but they both need this contact right now.

“I know. I guess I am, too. But I don’t believe she was doing anything on purpose. And I don’t think anyone noticed. So, maybe give her a pass…as long as she knows to be careful in the future?”

Sam sighs softly and squeezes her hand before returning his own to the steering wheel. “I can try.”

xxxx

Later that night, Sam walks into his apartment with a pizza box in his hand. He finds his car keys and a handwritten note from Natalie on the kitchen island--the same island that she'd caught him and Jules making out on the first day she stayed with him, the day he and Jules had gotten back together.

 _I'm sorry I let you down_ , Natalie wrote.

Sam sighs. He and Natalie have never been especially close, not like he and Amanda had been. But maybe they can be if they both give it a shot. Maybe Jules was right that Natalie was struggling to find herself and her place in the world, just like Darcy. There had been a few people in Darcy's life who'd shown him kindness, but who did Natalie have? Shouldn't she be able to count on him? Her brother?

The sound of rolling wheels on the floor had him looking up in time to see Natalie wheeling her suitcase out of the apartment's bedroom. When he'd seen the note, he'd assumed she'd left it on her way out the door.

"Nat."

She looks just as surprised to see him as he feels to see her. "No, you were right. I'm going to clear out. You can have your life back."

"You're already in my life. Okay? I'm an idiot. I want you to stay with me."

"Is this the part where I'm supposed to give you a hug?"

"You can grab us a couple of beers."

"Two weeks,” she promises. “A month, tops"

"Okay. Any longer and one of us is going to need to learn how to cook."

"Probably should anyway," commented Natalie as she opened the fridge to retrieve the beers. "I've never really had anyone to cook for."

Sam pops the cap off the bottle and takes a sip of his beer.

"So," Natalie inhales a deep breath. "Jules."

"Yeah," says Sam, grabbing the pizza box and heading into the living room section of the apartment with it.

"Okay, look, this is probably not my place. I mean, who am I to say this, but...the way I see it, Sammy, you got this woman, and you got this job, and sneaking around...it's not much of a five-year plan. Do you hear what I'm saying?" 

Sam does, and just nods. He knows that. Jules knows that. But they also know that how they felt about each other didn't go away in the years they'd been "just friends", after that first time of secret dating. Hadn't gone away and wouldn't. And they don't _want_ those feelings to die, either. Neither one of them likes the sneaking around. But with the team on probation and the department rule against fraternization between teammates, they don't have much of a choice. There is no way that Sam will ever give Jules up, and he won’t let her walk away from him again, either.

Natalie looks at him, her expression one of open and honest concern. "You--you have one life. What do you want?"

Sam doesn't have an answer for her. Or maybe for himself, either. He wants...oh, he wants so much. It's how and if he can get and keep what he wants that is the issue. He turns, stares at his reflection in the apartment window, and takes another swig of his beer. Natalie, wisely, doesn't say anything else.


	3. 4.6 A Day in the Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the delay--for some reason I thought I'd finished posting this story here and clearly I hadn't.

Sergeant Greg Parker walked into SRU shortly before 5 AM, hoping that the day would go well. He quickly changed from street clothes to workout attire and headed for the gym. After weeks of being shorthanded after Wordy's departure to Guns & Gangs, the team finally selected his replacement. Rafik Rosseau will join the team today and none too soon. Greg's team was stressed out and had been for quite some time. The better part of two years of some of the toughest hot calls Greg could ever remember—his colossal misjudgment in seeking an outside psychologist for an objective view of the team for their last annual requalifications, Dr. Toth's brutal interrogation of each officer, Ed's shooting and resultant five month recuperation, and Wordy's diagnosis of early-onset Parkinson's disease. Greg's poor judgment in not cluing Ed in about that last event had resulted in Ed's massive overreaction and prompted Wordy's exit from the team prematurely. The entire team had been under pressure ever since, weeks of running calls shorthanded taking a toll Everything combined meant immense pressure on everyone. Greg hoped that Raf proves up to coming and stepping up fast to give everyone a bit of a break.

"Ready for today?" Sam asked Jules as Greg entered the workout area.

"I’m here, aren't I" she retorted.

"I can see that,” Sam smirked while doing catch-and-release with a dumbbell weight. “Doesn't answer my question, though."

He got a dirty look from Jules. “Let me guess, Braddock: you were the kid who always had the smart-aleck answer to offer, right?”

Sam’s grin grew even bigger. “Hey, if you got it, flaunt it. So, you gonna answer the question, or not, Jules?”

"It's a trick question. Like in the game of tag. Ready or not, today is here."

"Yes, it is, boys and girl. Today is here and it will be a good one," Greg greeted his team cheerfully.

"Boss, did you forget what day it is?" Spike wondered incredulously.

Greg looked at the date feature on his watch, and cursed himself for jinxing the team with his wish for a good day. Valentine's Day _and_ breaking in their new rookie? Team One is cursed for sure and certain. Why hadn't he picked up on this earlier and tried to schedule Raf's start on the team for another day, any other day? Valentine's Day has always been one of the busiest and hardest days because for most people it is either the happiest day of the year for them or the worst. And that never tends to bode well for the SRU teams patrolling the city.

To top things off, Raf doesn’t arrive for workout. Alright, so technically he wasn't officially late--the pre-shift workout isn't an SRU mandate, though it has always been a general team expectation. Now that he thinks about it, Greg doesn't recall it having been communicated to Raf, though, so they’ll let this one slide. The rest of the team is present, however, and going through their sets and reps on the various pieces of gym equipment with friendly competition and slightly pointed teasing about the plans--or lack of them—that everyone has for after shift. Raf arrives at SRU just before seven, right as the team finishes workout. They’ve only just entered their respective locker rooms when Winnie comes on the intercom to report a hot call. It sends them all into overdrive to get dressed, geared up, and moving. The insanely busy day has clearly begun. 

"Subject's a jumper. Male, late fifties, Sherbourne Bridge."

"Is the area contained?" Ed asks.

“Negative. Cars on the overpass are stopped."

"Check your PDA," the team leader tells Raf. "Spike's gonna send us schematics."

"What do we know about the subject?" Greg gets the team into business mode. Winnie feeds them information on the possible jumper while they rush to the scene. Jules takes lead on negotiating, with Ed and Raf backing her up, while the rest of the team tries to bring the scene under control and gather any information that might tie into this subject.

"May I ask you what you're thinking?" Jules continues trying to connect with the man. "What brought you here today?"

Greg winces when Raf takes a comment the subject makes to him about his son as an invitation to jump into Jules' negotiation. This is a rookie mistake on Raf's part and one that Greg will have to address after the call to ensure that it doesn't happen again. That is going to have to wait, though. Spike dashes for the nearest SRU vehicle when the hot call claxon began to sound again.

"Spike, get Team Four on it," Greg directs. His thought about this being a bad day is confirmed when Spike reports that all the other on-duty SRU teams are currently busy, and Team One will have to split up to handle this new hostage situation. Greg decides that he and Ed will take Raf and head to this call, leaving Spike and Sam to back up Jules here. Raf's continued interference in the negotiation is likely to provoke this man into jumping, and if Jules loses him, she'll either blame herself or Raf, and neither will be a good outcome. Besides, this trio has an incredibly strong connection and can easily handle working without one of the team's leaders present. "Jules, you good?”

"I need something to work with here.” Anyone who didn’t know her as well as Greg does would taste the frustration in her words, but she sounds and appears perfectly in control.

"Looks like we've got his car," Sam reports. "Old-model sedan registered to Cary McCarty. I"ll see what else I can dig up."

As Ed turns over control of Jules' tether to Spike, and he and Raf turn to follow Greg to one of the SUVs to start their trip to this new hot call, Greg continued to listen to Jules over the comm system. Potential suicides are never easy, but Jules is as cool as a cucumber, stepping up to give Cary a reality check about the outcome of jumping, while Sam gets background details from one of Cary’s neighbors.

"Hey, Jules, the friend says he's a straight arrow, no drugs or alcohol. Wait. I've got a suicide note here. It's to his kids, Aemon and Angela. Apologizing. Says he can't take another year alone."

“Is he close to his family?" Spike queries.

"I'm on it." Sam

"Why are you doing this today? Can you tell me why you're here today?" Jules asks Cary.

"I can't take it anymore," Cary replies.

Sam has more information. "Jules, Mr. Holland said that his wife passed three years ago today. That's not all. Today's the day they got married." Well, no wonder Cary was suicidal. To have lost his wife on their wedding anniversary must have been a hard blow.

xxxxx

Pulling up outside the gentleman's club where a woman is holding a man hostage, Greg finally switches radio channels away from the one Jules and the rest of the team are on. He hates leaving her without his support, but he has a responsibility to focus on this situation and the life of the man at risk here. Jules is a good negotiator, his skilled secondary for a while now, and he knows Cary is in good hands with her, and with Spike and Sam, too. 

When he listens to the call recording later, he'll be so proud of her for opening up to Cary about her youthful best friend, how she'd committed suicide after her mom's death, and asking Cary how his own kids would handle losing their dad on the anniversary of their mom's death. Greg will feel like bursting with pride when Jules got Cary to come down from the railing. He has often seen her succeeding him as a lead negotiator, profiler, and team sergeant down the road.

He'll think and feel those things later, but for now, all Greg can focus on is how this day is going from bad to worse as yet another hot call gets announced by Winnie. Thankfully, he also hears that the first call has just ended, which means that they can handle this latest call, while Ed stays behind at the club with Raf. Greg has a feeling that Ed will be joining him in reading Raf the rookie-mistake riot act, given that he just jumped the gun here, too, and inserted himself into the hostage situation. This has _really_ been a bad day to break in a new guy. Has the team made a mistake in selecting Raf to replace Wordy on the team? He'd seemed like a good choice at the time, but now...? Greg is starting to have a few doubts. But just at the very moment this doubt rears its head, Raf starts showing signs that his mistakes of this morning might just be new-job jitters. He really impresses Greg with what he says to the woman, Freya, who is holding her daughter Asta's boss/lover hostage, shaing how he'd been in a similar place as Asta once, and how his father had attacked the man who'd molested Raf as a teen, and that the elder Mr. Rousseau—whose picture Spike had commented on when Raf had posted it on his locker door a few hours ago--is still in prison for that retaliation. Greg isn't sure that he could have shared something so personally painful to connect with a subject, but he deeply admires Raf for doing so. He is also grateful that the peaceful end to this hostage situation means Ed and Raf will now be able to join the rest of the team at Paradigm Software to deal with the gunman in their offices. Gunmen in company offices are never a good thing, especially not when it’s a former employee like in this case. The spree shooting call at the museum had been months ago, but it still haunts Greg's dreams, and likely those of the rest of the team, too. He’ll have to keep a sharp eye on Raf the rest of today for both of these reasons.

Inspector Stainton is on the scene at Paradigm when the team arrives, with office blueprints, evacuation status, and the concern about possible hostages.

"What are you hearing?" Sam asks, stepping up into the tactical role since Ed is still on his way to the call. "Is it spree behavior or a targeted operation?" More and more, Greg is impressed with how Sam has matured as an officer in the years since he joined the team. The way he rose to the occasion and assumed the temporary role of Team Leader while Ed was out on medical leave had been quite impressive, and no one in SRU had had any problems or issues with how Sam had handled anything. Just like with Jules, Greg can envision Sam taking on the Team Leader role permanently one day, whether for Team One after Ed retires, or by moving over to another team. He’ll hate to see either eventuality happen, honestly, but he knows that Sam is proving to be ready for the increased responsibilities. The last thing that Greg wants is to stand in the way of a colleague’s advancement just because of his own selfish desire for things not to change.

Stainton's report that the gunman had walked past two people who'd then escaped from the office confirmed what Greg hears in an aborted 911 call from a Paradigm employee hiding in the offices. He hopes that Josh has merely been wounded, but the silence after that gunshot doesn't bode well and the sergeant is painfully aware that the man could well be dead now.

"I'm not liking all these glass walls," Sam notes, tracing a gloved finger over the blueprints spread on the police cruiser's hood. "If the gunman can see us he has the chance to respond."

"Shoot to stop?" Jules asks.

"He's active, ready to shoot…he might have more than one target," Greg announces. Just then, Winnie patches in another 911 call from inside the Paradigm office. The team manages to get some location information about this hostage, Rose, and the shooter, Oliver, before the call cuts off.

"Try calling her back?" asks Spike.

"No, that'll draw attention to her," denies Jules.

"Maybe it's on vibrate," Spike suggests.

"We can't risk it," Greg decides. "She hung up or was cut off for a reason."

With Ed and Raf now at the scene, a tactical plan is quickly developed and implemented. On the way up, the head of Paradigm calls 911 and Greg begins talking with her. It doesn't ease his feelings about this active shooter situation to learn that the shooter, Oliver, had been fired by Marina Levin for inappropriate workplace behavior, and for essentially stalking her. If Oliver was delusional enough to believe that Marina loved him, without any objective evidence of that, then the realistic odds of this call ending with Oliver still alive aren't very good. The most they may be able to hope for will be to keep the two women alive.

"On me," Greg commands, summoning the rest of the team to follow him into the offices.

"Spike, less lethal. Sam, lethal if he threatens Rose," Ed assigns the tactical roles and the team begins stealthing their way closer to the shooter and his hostage. Hostages, rather, after Marina leaves her hiding place to protect Rose. Greg can somewhat understand why: she's just learned Josh was killed and doesn't want to see another of her employees die. But Greg has seen too many situations of this type and knows Marina is in danger even if Oliver claims to love her.

Raf show his skills again when he suggests a way to get Rose out of the line of fire. But as expected, the call doesn't end well, not after Oliver presents Marina with a poem he'd written, a diamond ring, and a marriage proposal. Greg feels terrible that Marina's face, hair, and dress are covered with Oliver's blood when Ed has no choice but to shoot him. Spike pushes the gun away from Oliver's dead hand and Jules slides the poem and ring into evidence bags. When their work is done and the scene handed off to unis, the team—minus Ed, who has gone with SIU per protocol—heads back to the station to debrief.

“Before we get started, I want to tell all of you how proud I am of how you handled things today. Valentine’s Day is never easy—we all know that—but this one was especially hard. We did everything we could to keep the peace and get everyone we encountered today home safely. Obviously, that isn’t always possible—again, something we all know. Raf, we’re going to go through each call, talk through why we did or didn’t do certain things, possible alternatives…you’ll see.”

“Shouldn’t we wait for Ed?”

“SIU could take a while,” Jules shakes her head. “He’ll get here when he can.”

At the end of the extensive debrief of the day, Spike reads off the transcript, “3:45 pm, lethal force deployed by Constable Ed Lane. Subject neutralized.”

“Neutralized,” Raf repeats the word, seeming a bit unsure about it.

“How’d the inquisition go?” Jules asks Ed, who’s just walked into the briefing room.

“Not much to talk about,” he replies. "It was his life or hers.”

“Got any questions? Anything to ask?” Greg’s question to the team at large doesn’t get a response from anyone. “I’m here if you need me.” And with that, everyone pushes back from the table and head for the door.

He and Ed call for Raf to stay behind as the others head for the locker rooms to change. It’s to his credit that the rookie doesn’t wait to be dressed down but rather immediately acknowledges his errors that day, and promises that he’s learned his lesson. Both of the team’s leaders are pleased by the attitude displayed, but agree with each other’s silent vow to keep an eye on things all the same. They made many mistakes in handling Sam when he was the rookie and they’ve worked hard not to repeat those errors since then.

"Hey, we're all going to go to the Goose for a beer. You guys want to join us when you're done?" Spike sticks his head back into the briefing room and addresses his question to Greg, Ed, and Raf.

"We're done," Greg says.

"Not for me, Spike," Ed turns down the invitation. "Place I got to be."

"Valentine's stuff?" teases Greg with a small smile.

"Tradition. What can I say?"

"Say hi to Sophie for me." Greg watches Ed leave. He's glad to see his friend heading home to his wife and kids, rather than joining the team for drinks. Ed has been doing better about having a work/family balance in his life since he and Sophie negotiated his return to the team, but it will be only too easy for Ed to slip back into old habits, and Greg doesn't want to see that happen.

"You want to go?" Jules specifically directs the question to Raf; she knows Greg won't likely go as a recovered alcoholic.

"Someplace I got to be, too," Raf shakes his head apologetically.

"Someone special?" Jules glances at Sam as she makes the inquiry.

"You guys want to join me?" Raf doesn't answer the question, but rather extends his own invitation.

"Okay." Shrugs from Sam and Spike raise no objections, so Jules makes the decision for all of them. They all go to the Goose for drinks regularly, so doing something else could be a nice change of pace.

When Raf reveals their destination to be a fairly nice music club where he and his band will be performing, the others decide they need better things to wear than the street clothes they'd donned that morning. Spike heads to his parents' place to change, and Sam drops off his car at his apartment to catch a ride with Jules—with the excuse that parking is sure to be limited. He doesn’t even need to go up to his unit to change since he has a drawer in one of Jules’ bedroom dressers and a few hangers in her closet. He thinks briefly of inviting Natalie along, but he spends enough time with his sister as it is, and she's probably out doing something anyway, so he doesn't bother.

At the club, Spike, Sam, and Jules settle into a curved bench along one wall of the club. A blonde woman in pink approaches them, offering a familiar and friendly greeting.

"Hey guys!"

"Natalie!" Spike greets her enthusiastically. A faint blush cues Jules and Sam in that Natalie's presence here tonight is Spike's doing. Sam isn't sure what to think. He doesn't know about his sister's romantic life--and doesn't want to--but he knows that Spike doesn't really date. He isn't altogether--or maybe that's _at all_ \--comfortable thinking that his teammate might be interested in his sister and vice versa. But for tonight, it might end up being a good thing. If Spike is focused on or distracted by Natalie beside him, then he probably won't be paying much attention to Sam and Jules. And that might let them risk just a bit of a Valentine's Day date feeling.

Jules plays with her necklace idly. She and Sam look at each other and exchange small smiles. They're sitting a bit too close together for mere friends--but it can be explained away by the holiday crowd and music fans who are packed inside the club. Times like this, when they can be out in public, and together, are rare. Neither one minds time alone at Sam's apartment or Jules's house, but there are definitely times when each has wished to be able to just go out on real dates and not worry that someone they know might see them and figure things out.

 _“This might be a good thing,”_ Jules muses, watching and listening to the flirtation between Spike and Natalie. Spike deserves to have someone to focus his attention on, and take his mind off his terminally ill father and the family pressures he’s under to quit SRU. She isn’t sure that Natalie is “the one” for Spike—is pretty sure that _isn’t_ the case, in fact—but Spike needs…something. And if Natalie has Spike on her radar, then maybe she won’t be spending quite so much time at Sam’s apartment. She’s nice enough, but a bit too impulsive and flighty for Jules to be able to really relate to. The chiding she’d given to Sam this morning about how he views Natalie is just as true for Jules herself. They both have the ability to dig down and focus single-mindedly on a goal, where Natalie seems more like a butterfly, flitting from one flower to the next with no plan at all. And besides the personality differences, having Sam’s sister around did tend to kill the mood—which was why they spent more time at Jules’ place than at Sam’s anymore. Her smile doesn’t change, but with her eyes she lets Sam know that their Valentine’s Day evening is only just beginning.

After finishing his first song of the night, Raf takes a moment to drink from his water bottle and glances over at the curved couch along the club's back wall that his new teammates had claimed on arrival. There's a fourth person sitting with them, who hadn't been there before. She's unfamiliar to Raf, but her blonde hair and something about her face and smile make him think of Sam, and Raf looks over to make a comparison. Yeah, there does seem to be a resemblance. Are they related? Probably. But if Sam doesn't want to talk about his family, Raf won't push him to--he's got plenty of secrets of his own to be able to respect the ones that others might want to keep. He scans the crowd while singing the next song in the set, tracking back over his teammates again before continuing on around the room. He offered a performer's smile to the women in the room, crooning out another romantic ballad. Out of the corner of his eye, Raf caught Sam's face dropping the calm mask it had worn all day, allowing a small and quick smile to manifest. But Sam isn't gazing at his presumptive sister or at any of the single women who dotted the club. No, Sam seems to be looking straight at Jules. And she is looking right back at Sam. It's only long practice that keeps Raf from losing his place in the song. He can't have seen anything. Could he? No, Raf decided. It was just a commiserating glance being exchanged between two single people out in a public place on the most romantic night of the year. That is all it was--all it could possibly be.

xxxxx

Greg is finishing up the paperwork from all of the hot calls the team handled that day a good while after the rest of his team has departed. Unlike the others, he has no reason to rush home tonight, or any night, and he doesn’t mind staying behind to take care of this part of his responsibilities. He knows that the group going out tonight would have welcomed him, but one of Toth’s comments sticks in his brain: “ _You need to be their sergeant, not their friend.”_ But to be honest, even though he doesn’t entirely agree with the psychologist, it’s best that he didn’t come along this time. He’s been a bit distracted since the team left tonight, though he can’t quite pin down why.

 _“Focus, Greg,”_ he tells himself. Returning his attention to the transcript in front of him, he again reads Oliver’s words saying he understood why Marina had had to let him go: “Boss-Employee relationships. Not so good.” Marina had tried to nip the problem in the bud by firing Oliver when it was clear he wouldn’t—couldn’t—see things clearly or maintain proper boundaries—and it hadn’t been enough. He’d never gotten the message, and a man was dead tonight because of it—two men, counting Oliver himself. All of a sudden, Greg wondered what might have happened if either Sam or Jules had looked him and Eddie right in the eyes and said, “Hell, no” when told end things or leave the team. Oliver had clearly crossed lines in the things he’d done—the notes, flowers, gifts left at his boss’s home. But, had Sam and Jules done the same thing? Other than the blue paint on Sam’s ear and his reluctance to go with SIU after killing the sniper who’d shot Jules and had nearly killed Ed as well, had the relationship impacted his job performance at all? Or Jules’? No, Greg can’t think of even a single time when either had performed at less than their best effort. But the rules were the rules, and they’d made their decision.

But was it right? Why is it that dating relationships seem to have so much more weight than marriages do? No one has asked Wordy, or Ed, or anyone else on any SRU team if they could do their jobs and be married at the same time. Well, except for Toth hammering Ed about Sophie taking Clark and going to stay with her mom during the late stage of the difficult pregnancy with Izzy. He shakes his head. Sam and Jules have been broken up for a long time now, and more than amply proven that they’ve been able to successfully make the shift back to just being teammates and friends. Why is he going off on such strange and pointless tangents? What is he trying to avoid thinking about by doing this?

He looks up at the sound of a knock, surprised to see Marina Levin standing in the doorway, Winnie behind her. Greg can't imagine why she would come here at this hour after what she’s endured today. He's more than a bit bemused that she's come simply to thank him for having saved her life. He and the team were just doing their jobs. And it's a very odd feeling when she hugs him tightly—hugs him for the second time today, actually. And maybe that was part of what had had him so edgy: the way Marina had thrown her arms around him, clinging to him like he was her lifeline, saying “It was you, it was you,” when she recognized Greg’s voice. He’d hugged her back, because she’d needed it. 

Greg has only rarely dated in the years since his wife left him and took their son away with her. 'Married to the job' had been one of his ex-wife's accusations and it is as true now as it was then. He's beaten the dependence on alcohol that had cost him his family--and then been his crutch during those tough early months alone—thanks to Ed kicking his butt, but the rest of it is pretty much the same ten years later. So it's never really bothered him that he's not had all that many first dates over the years, or that most of those fizzled out before too long. Like he’d told Ed one time, after ending things with that single mom—after screwing things up with his first family, he didn’t feel he deserved to have another chance.

"How are you?" Marina asks him. He doesn't know. There's the polite answer he'd give his team, the more honest one his therapist might get, and the truth...?

"You have time for a cup of coffee?" He's not sure why he extends the invitation, but he does, and somewhat to his surprise, she accepts.

“Everything is ready to be filed,” he tells Winnie as they walk past her desk.

“I’ll take care of it, Boss. Have a good night.”

“Thanks, Winnie. You, too.” And for once, he walks out of SRU and doesn’t go home to think about his mistakes or the ‘could-have-beens’. For tonight, it’s enough that this woman thinks he did a good job. For tonight, he can let everything else go.


	4. 4.7 Shockwave

Greg just had a feeling that this day wasn't going to go well. He especially felt that way when the team got the call-out from Winnie about a suspicious bag being found at Fairbanks Tower. Suspicious bags and packages often turned out to be bombs. Bombs required a bomb expert to analyze and disarm them. Team One had one of the best bomb guys on the entire Metropolitan Police force, but Spike might not be at the top of his game today. He'd come straight from the hospital, where his terminally ill father had been admitted the night before due to breathing difficulties. Spike ought to still be with him, but the techie had insisted on coming into work and treating the day just like any other.

"Dad should be getting discharged later today," Spike had announced when he'd arrived at SRU. "I'm good to go." All Greg could do was hope that was true, especially now that they'd gotten this bomb call. Raf wasn't anywhere near experienced enough to handle something like this solo, so Spike had to take Babycakes down to the basement where the security guard had seen the bag. Almost on the spur of the moment, Ed sent Sam down, too. Their former soldier been there and done that over in Afghanistan and had seen a wide range of IEDs and other explosives, which might give him useful insights, as well as keeping the area clear of any distractions and making sure any people in the basement evacuated quickly.

Topside, the evacuation was still mostly chaos—employees streaming out of the building with little idea what was really going on. But fortunately the uniformed police officers were starting to bring order and shepherding everyone away from the tower. Greg's attention is—as usual—split between the team, the scene, and the profile he needs to build on the—statistically likely—man who's done this. But his attention is all on his team the moment Sam says,"Spike! Found your bomb. You must have walked right past it." Only for Raf to then reply that he and Spike are looking at the bomb—and it's clearly not the same one Sam sees. Two bombs?

Panic flares again in the plaza when loud rumbling echoes in the air and plumes of cloudy smoke erupt from the underground air vents

"What's going on?" demands Greg.

"We've got two separate explosions. Jules and I are going down now," Ed reports. "Spike, Raf, talk to me."

Greg echoes him, "Sam, Spike, Raf: talk to me! Sam! Sam, buddy, talk to me, please. Spike, Raf, talk to me. You guys okay? Spike? Raf?" He might—probably, hopefully—still have his calm and professional mask on, but inside, Greg was filled with panic. _"Did I just get half my team killed?"_ he wondered. Would his mistakes never stop? Doubting and second-guessing himself, bringing Dr. Toth in to do the team's annual psych evaluations because he didn't trust his own objectivity, giving the psychologist information in his own private notes that was used to hammer down the members of the team, keeping Wordy's Parkinson's diagnosis a secret from everyone, including Ed? _What am I doing?_

Finally, "Boss, it's Spike. Raf and I are okay. The device detonated. There's significant damage. Hallway's caved in."

Sheer relief that the two men are alright. Now Greg just needs the same assurance from the other. "Sam? Sam, talk to me. Raf, go find our guy!"

"Yeah," Raf responds.

Ed calls out again, voice echoing in the stairwell he and Jules are still descending. "Sam, you copy?"

"Sam! Come on! Speak to me, Sam!" Jules' tone is concerned, holding what seems like just a little more emotion than might be expected of mere teammates. Though he doesn't speak at that moment, Greg echoes the words, and some of the emotion. Spike and Raf would have been down there regardless, as the team's bomb expert and his backup, but Sam was only there because Ed had told him to be, and Greg hadn't countermanded the tactical leader's decision. If anything has happened to Sam—to any of them—it will be Greg's fault. He already blames himself for Lou's death-for giving him the okay to start on defusing the bomb Rafer Wilcox had planted at the university while Spike was enroute from the first bombsite. He couldn't let it happen again.

"Raf, you find Sam? Talk to me, buddy!"

"On it, Boss," Raf reports, "but there's a lot of debris. A lot of smoke. Sam? Sam? Sam! Oh, man! Sam's down!"

"Is he breathing?" Greg holds his breath waiting for the answer, as if not inhaling air himself will give that much more of it to Sam. He doesn't know how close Sam was to this second bomb when it went off, was he pinned by debris, hit by flying shrapnel?

"Boss, I found Sam. He's unconscious, but his pulse is good."

Okay, good. One worry somewhat abated. It's not good that Sam is still unconscious. But unconscious means alive and alive is good right now. Greg knows he needs to refocus onto the priorities, however little he might like it at the moment.

"Raf, what kind of injuries do we have down there?"

"Mostly superficial. One serious. Sam's still unconscious but he's breathing fine." Raf continues on to report on the number of trapped employees and give more detailed information on the injuries sustained.

"Help is on the way. Just stand by," the sergeant assures his officers.

Jules runs up. "I've organized the unis. We're evacuating the building, top down. Should be clear soon."

"Good job, Jules."

As he surveys the crowded plaza, Greg listens with only part of his attention as Spike tries to figure out what the bomber's purpose was. Greg can agree that it doesn't make much sense for the bomber to want to close off access to the basement level but yet to not cause much damage. But they can figure out the why's, wherefore's and reasons thereof after everyone is safely out of there. Sheer terror flashes when Greg hears Spike give his report on a new bomb. "This makes the other two look like firecrackers!" They've got to get everyone out, and fast. There are three trapped officers, the security guard, and a half-dozen civilians, and perhaps only five minutes left before this bomb blows, too.

"Jules, let's clear the plaza!" shouts Greg, knowing he's got to get as many people to safety as possible. He can't do anything right now for those trapped underground, but these people up here can and must be saved.

"Come on, let's go!" Jules whirls around and starts gesturing and calling for people to move farther away. In their earpieces, both can hear Spike explaining to Raf his plan to try and delay the triggering of this bomb's detonator.

Then, blessedly, a low groan is audible.

"Sir, are you okay?" an unfamiliar and slightly-accented voice is heard, faintly.

"Yeah. Any casualties?" this voice is also soft, but recognizably Sam's.

"One. A lady is hurt."

"Sarge. Jules." Their names come more clearly over the comm system than the previous short conversation had—most likely Sam's comm unit had been knocked away from his face and had now been replaced in its proper place, the sergeant decides. Greg's concern is somewhat assuaged when Sam calls out to him, the responsible subordinate letting giving his boss a status report. But the speaking of the second name reignites a concern that Greg had first considered--and then mostly buried--more than six months ago. Why had Sam singled Jules out particularly when announcing his return to consciousness, and yet not done the same for Spike, Raf, or Ed?

"Sam, welcome back," Greg deliberately pushes his questions away. The priority has to be rescue, not getting answers to questions that the team's sergeant may not really want to ask.

"I'm gonna go check on him," announces Raf, before anyone can order him to do so. Greg likes it. Raf is still settling in with the team, and them with him, so it's nice to see him stepping up and using initiative. They've tried hard to avoid the problems that accompanied Sam's arrival on the team, but it's still a work in progress. Maybe they were just luckier with Sam than they could have realized. Leah, Donna, and now Raf have all been skilled and talented officers, but none of them have ever gelled with the team anywhere near as well as Sam ended up doing.

"You gave us a hell of a scare there, buddy," Greg tries to lighten the mood with a bit of humor. "You okay?"

"I'm sore, but all my pieces are in one place," Sam replies.

"Braddock, you're supposed to leave the bombs to the demolition guys," Chiding words from Jules, delivered with almost the right amount of off-handed humor. Almost.

"I'd love to," he retorts.

"Raf, how's he look?" asks Greg. He's learned through experience that it's usually more helpful to get a third party assessment of Sam's condition when he's hurt instead of relying on him to deliver a fully honest report. That bit of Sam's tough-soldier persona is still very much in evidence in his personality.

"He's got a head wound, boss," Raf delivers his judgment of Sam' status.

"I'm good." It was one of Sam's standard answers to any question from anyone about his health or well-being. Standard, and often misleading. His high tolerance for pain and injury meant that what was "fine" to Sam would see practically anyone else in a hospital.

Knowing that there's only one serious injury, to a woman, and the fact that Ed thinks he's found an alternate way to reach the trapped people, should make Greg feel better. But it doesn't. The extra time Spike bought them by chilling the bomb's chemical timer with the liquid nitrogen is ticking away—not that they even know exactly how much time was gained—and they still have to break through the wall, and lower and raise the winch to bring people out one at a time. _"Are we going to have enough time?_ Greg just doesn't know. Priority of Life means that all the civilians have to be extracted first, before anyone on the team can come up—even the injured Sam, or Spike, who has just gotten a call from his mother that his father will die of complications from a blood clot before tomorrow morning.

Over the radio, Greg can hear Jules talking to a paramedic—it sounds like Steve, who is an old high school classmate of Jules' and was briefly her boyfriend after she'd broken up with Sam, though the relationship has been over for months now. But Jules is a consummate professional even as she shoots down Steve's intent to go down to help treat the injured, offering up a safer way to help them instead.

With almost herculean effort, Greg finally does push his concern for his team to the sidelines. He is the team's chief profiler for a reason, and he has a job to do just like everyone else does. After reporting that the building is now clear, Jules joins Greg in the truck to start trying to figure the bomber out. Fairbanks Tower is a huge building and there are just too many potential targets.

Greg slams his fist on the desk in frustration when the man who'd called the hotline saying he was the bomber turned out to be a kook who just wanted attention.

"Hey, Sarge."

"Yeah, Jules?"

"Lewellen Corporation takes up the bottom seven floors of this building. They're an aerospace company making weapons guidance systems. Sounds like a target someone might want to use bombs against, don't you think?"

"Could be. See if you can get in touch with the CEO—find out if he can think of anyone who might want to target his company."

"Copy that."

Greg is so very proud of his team this day. Topside, Ed works to reach the trapped people, while Jules gets a possible subject name from the Lewellen CEO and goes to his house to investigate. Down below, the rest of the team continues to help the civilians and then, after Winnie sends them a picture of the subject, to keep the man, Alexei Koninsky—the very security guard who'd called in the gym bag report—from possibly detonating his device before everyone has been rescued. No matter how worried each of them surely is at the danger faced by the others, everyone does their jobs to the highest degree, just like always.

"Raf, coming down to you," Ed announces. The last civilian has been extracted, so now it's time to get the team out.

"No, man, Sam's hurt. He's next."

"Seniority. I stay. Get out," Sam shoots down the idea and makes Raf hook up to the tether.

"Sam, you're next," decrees Ed once Raf has made it up.

Yet again, Sam seems determined to put others ahead of himself. "Spike, go see your dad. He's not going to give it up." Clearly meaning the bomber and the infrared disarming code.

"No," denies Spike. "There's still time. Sam, you're next."

"Go, Sam!" Ed snaps.

"Sam, don't be an idiot," Jules scolds while driving back to the scene. "You're injured. Priority of Life. Get out of there."

Greg is a bit surprised—though he probably really shouldn't be—when Sam stops arguing the point and wasting time that they honestly don't have. He breathes a little easier when he sees Sam's blond head crest the top of the air vent. After Ed unhooks him and starts lowering the tether back down for Spike, Sam starts for the barricade where the rest of the team is waiting. He's surely moving as quickly as he can, considering the bomb down below, but it's a much slower pace than he typically runs at, probably because of the slight limp that Greg's keen gaze detects.

"You okay?" he asks.

Sam looks at him with some confusion, so Greg points to his leg.

"It's nothing. I just got thrown around a bit when the bomb blew. No holes or slices," and Sam turns back and forth to show an intact—if dirty—uniform. The body movement does give Greg a good look at the head wound which Raf had mentioned earlier. It didn't seem to still be bleeding, so hopefully it was only a minor abrasion--though with head wounds one never knows. given how profusely even slight injuries tend to bleed. Sam will still need to get it checked out and cleaned before leaving the scene, even if he doesn't end up needing a trip to the hospital. But Greg lets the health issue lay for the moment—no way will Sam agree to seek medical treatment while Spike is still below ground with that bomb and its maker.

Jules exits her SUV and heads to join Greg, Raf, and Sam behind the barricades and police cruisers. She gives Sam a critical once-over but doesn't say anything, not wanting to disrupt Spike's continued efforts to negotiate with Alexei Koninsky--efforts that are blessedly successful. Soon after, with the bomb deactivated, Koninsky in custody, and Spike on his way to the hospital and his dying father, Greg turns his attention back to his banged up officers.

"Sam, Raf, paramedics, now," Greg orders, pointing his guys toward the waiting bank of ambulances. With a sigh, Sam heads off as directed, with Raf following suit. Sam might try and avoid getting checked out when no one knew he was injured, but with it known today, policy dictated he had to be medically cleared to return to duty.

While Sam gets his abrasions cleaned and bandaged, Greg arranges the transfer of their prisoner into regular police custody for processing and confinement while Jules coordinates with other unis on a schedule to let each company's employees back into their offices to retrieve their belongings. Raf is quickly cleared by a paramedic and Ed drives him back to the station to get his stuff and head home where his family can keep an eye on him.

"So is Rania going to be okay?" Sam asks while the paramedic, Steve, checks his eyes with a penlight.

"Yeah. You got her out in time. Good job with that IV and those tourniquets."

"Army field training," Sam dismisses the praise. "Everyone in the unit knew how to do basic treatment stuff. We couldn't always count on having a medic close by, so we all learned how to handle the minor things."

Her work done, Jules walks over to the ambulance to see how Sam is doing.

"You got to get him checked out in Emerg," Steve says. "Could be a concussion."

"Jules, I'm fine," Sam obviously isn't a fan of the paramedic's suggestion.

"Come on, I'll take you," she dismisses Sam's objections, turning him in the direction of the team's SUVs. Steve stands up and watches the pair leave the scene, as Greg jogs over to join him.

"Steve," Greg greets him.

"Hey."

"Thanks for the help today."

"Hell of a day," Steve sighs.

"Yeah," Greg can't argue the point. A hell of a day, for sure. But everyone has walked away alive, and relatively uninjured, and that's so much better than how things easily could have gone.

"You guys did a great job today," Steve offers the compliment to the team commander, before his attention drifts away. Greg turns to follow Steve's gaze, and the two watch Sam and Jules continue to walk toward one of the SUVs. Jules' arm stretches across Sam's back, offering support he clearly doesn't need physically, but to which he is raising no objection. The way her form cants toward his, their bodies so close together as they walk that there isn't much if any gap between them. Heads incline ever-so-slightly toward each other as they seem to converse. The look on Steve's face as he watches grabs Greg: it's the look of a man who doesn't like what he sees, but who won't say or do anything about it. Steve gives Greg a resigned glance before starting to clean up the ambulance from Sam's treatment. It's clear to the team's sergeant that the paramedic still isn't over Jules-but that Steve won't push for a reunion. Whatever Steve may feel for Jules, it seems that at most, he was a rebound-or perhaps just the attempt of one-for her.

Arriving at the hospital to check on his guys, Greg is informed that both are done being treated in the Emergency Room. Raf has already been picked up by his mom, and Sam is ready to be discharged. 

"What's the verdict?" the sergeant asks, standing in the doorway of the treatment room. Sam and Jules both look toward the door, distracted from picking up Sam's gear.

"A mild concussion and some bruises," Jules answers before Sam has a chance to deflect.

"I'm fine," Sam insists.

"You will be. You're cleared to go home. Over-the-counter pain meds if needed. Standard concussion monitoring protocol," retorts the petite female. To Greg, she adds, "I've got it covered."

"Jules-"

"I'm the one who's available. Spike has to be with his family right now. You need to check on Spike; get him looked over by a doctor if possible. Ed's family needs him, and Raf's got his mom looking after him. I'll keep Sam in line this time." Jules rattles everything off in an efficient manner. There's nothing Greg can put his finger on—everything she's just said is completely true—yet there's just something…

"Okay. The team's off duty for a few days with three injuries today, plus Spike's father, so you make sure to get some rest, Sam." The blond sniper definitely looks like he needs some solid sleep. He's moving more stiffly now than he was back at Fairbanks Tower, meaning his bruised muscles have clearly started stiffening up.

"Copy that," Sam doesn't even try to argue—a sure sign that he's hurting more than he wants to let on.

"Come on," Jules says, picking up the last pieces of Sam's gear and using it to gesture toward the hallway. "We'll swing back by SRU to drop off your gear and pick up our go bags. Stop for food on the way to my place. Then we'll see if you last past the opening credits of a movie before you conk out."

Sam's face takes on an expression of 'oh boy, what am I getting into here?', but he wisely doesn't argue with Jules, instead silently lowering himself into the wheelchair that the orderly holds steady for him. Once settled, Sam is pushed out of the room, with Jules following just behind. Greg watches them until they round a corner in the hallway, and realizes why Steve's expression back at the scene had seemed so familiar: it was the same look Sam's face had carried-on the rare occasions when he let his impassive soldier mask slip to show any kind of emotion-after Jules had broken up with him, a look not seen for a while now. Sam hadn't evidenced expressions of wistful regret for some time, now that Greg reflected on it. He'd thought it just meant Sam was finally moving on, but… Sam has never mentioned a new girlfriend; then again he's never been one to speak much about his personal life, no matter how Spike and Lou used to tease him about being a ladies' man. That niggling thought resurfaces in Greg's mind. Could Sam be keeping quiet, for Jules? She hasn't mentioned seeing anyone since Steve. And while she never shared too many private details, either, the team has usually had an idea of whether or not she was dating and if so what the guy's name was. Yet, there's been nothing said in months. Could it be…? Past and present collide and merging into a picture that Greg doesn't like at all. He doesn't want to even think the thoughts, lest he make his fears into reality. But the more he actually considers the idea, the more evidence—silence, words, glances, expressions, gestures…it all seems to be coalescing into the right picture for all those puzzle pieces.

 _What are they thinking?_ Greg pounds a fist against his thigh as he stands in the hospital corridor. He knows—he just _knows_ —what it all has to mean. What he doesn't know is what he's going to do about it. He suspects—he's _sure_ —but can any of it be proven? Could it be argued that he's merely projecting the past onto the present? Reading into this what he's afraid he'll see? Sighing heavily, he pushes this latest conundrum aside, just like he's done with too many things already today, then turns and heads for the elevator and the intensive care floor. Spike and his mom will need all the support they can get tonight.

xxx

Jules drives the Jeep straight to her house from the hospital, not even bothering to ask Sam his preference of a destination. She needs to get Sam home where she can focus on him without worrying who might be watching. It had been so hard to dial down her instinctive reactions to only what would be acceptable and expected from a teammate. “You’d better call Nat and let her know we’re okay and going to my place tonight.”

“Yeah.” He’s barely pulled out his phone to do that when he’s drawn to look at Jules in surprise after “Oh, shoot—“ emerges from her mouth in a clipped tone.

“What?”

“Do you think he noticed?”

“Who? And what?”

“The boss. When I said that I was the only one who could look after you. I completely forgot about Nat.” Sam had forgotten about his roommate sister, too. Natalie is not the nurturing type--hospitals freak her out even more than they bother him--and she's just not someone he's going to seek out for help or comfort no matter what. Jules, on the other hand can comfort him anytime. He’d add “anywhere” to that, but can’t if they want to keep their secret.

“I don’t think Sarge noticed—he’d have said something if he did.” 

After a hearty dinner of soup and sandwiches--which Sam insisted on eating at the kitchen table and not in bed-- "It'll be easier and less mess," he'd said--he does accept Jules' help to climb the stairs and get ready for bed. She crawls under the covers and snuggles up next to her man like she always loves to do, using him as her pillow and draping her arm across his stomach. The sound of his heart beating under her ear soothes Jules immensely.

"I could have lost you today," she whispers into the dark silence.

"But I'm okay."

"You're going to be so colorfully bruised tomorrow--and even more sore than I know you are right now."

"But I'm okay."

It takes a moment for the familiar words to place themselves in her memories. Then she lifts up and uses her sniper eyesight and aim to accurately plant a kiss on his lips. Better that than the poke or punch she'd wanted to deliver when she realized Sam had quoted back to her the words she'd said to him after saving Tasha from falling off the mall's media tower long before they'd started dating the first time. 

"You, soldier, are playing with fire," she tells him. 

"Don't you mean I'm playing with a hot curling iron?" Sam quips, proving that he’s on the same mental wavelength that she is. Jules forgets that her boyfriend is an injured man and pounces. Sam certainly doesn’t act like he’s in pain as he locks his arms around her, making sure she can’t go anywhere.

The passion that has always existed between them flares up yet again, spurred even higher by the knowledge they both have that this day could only too easily have ended very differently from how it has. Each shoves those dark thoughts deep down, choosing to focus on stripping off sleepwear only just donned and affirming the fact that Sam is alive and Jules’, just as she is alive and Sam’s.


	5. 4.9 Cost of Doing Business

Greg parked his car in front of Jules' house and stared up at the graceful two-story structure. While to some people it might seem like an absurdly large home for a single woman to buy, Greg knew that the fixer-upper was a godsend to Jules in so many ways. He reached over to the passenger seat to retrieve the two items that were the reasons for his visit this morning. He wasn't even really sure now when he and Jules had started their tradition of trading off treating each other to Timmy's coffee on the first Monday of each month—years ago, for sure. This month was his turn. He could so easily have waited to hand Jules her double-double with skim milk until the team's scheduled shift today, but he wanted—maybe even needed—to do this now, privately. And not because of the envelope that lay on the seat next to the cardboard tray holding their coffee cups. Everyone would soon know about the professional honor Jules was being given, so it wasn't that it could or should be kept secret. No, it was what he'd been suspecting for months now—what he was almost certain was true—that had him outsides Jules' house this morning. He almost felt like a rebellious teenager, coming here unannounced; daring fate to somehow prove his suspicions wrong. Greg tucked the envelope into the inside pocket of his blazer and picked up the to-go coffee tray. Sitting here in his car any longer wouldn't get him any answers.

It took a while before the door opened in response to his ringing of the doorbell. Jules looked surprised to see him.

"First Monday of the month. My turn," Parker offered up the to-go tray from the coffee shop, handed Jules her "Double-double, skim milk".

"Since when is home delivery part of our deal?" she asked, something in her tone and expression giving him a hint that company hadn't been on her to-do list for the free morning leading to the team's late shift.

"When I come bearing news." He pulled the envelope out of his jacket pocket and extended it to her. "Police Services announced the Law Enforcement Professional of the Year. Julianna Callaghan."

"You're kidding!" she left her coffee on the entry table and took the envelope. As Greg told her about the upcoming gala award ceremony, a noise from upstairs pulled away part of his attention.

"Hey, Jules! I'm starving. Want some eggs-?" Sam Braddock came to an abrupt halt in the middle of descending Jules' staircase. The fact that Sam was here at such an early hour of the morning, was coming from the bedroom level of the house, and had bare feet and a completely unbuttoned shirt...all of it was a blatant slap in the face. Something that couldn't possibly be ignored or glossed over this time. The couple were busted but good-and they both knew it, as the expressions on their faces attested. With experience he'd recently begun to acquire through reconnecting with his teenage son, Parker could well guess that the regret he saw on both faces wasn't for the fact that they were breaking the department's rules and the team's probation with their off-hours activities, but rather for the fact that they'd just been caught at it. After a long moment of imitating a still-life painting, during which Sam and Jules locked eyes for a silent exchange, Sam reversed direction and went back upstairs, returning a couple minutes later with shirt buttoned and shoes on. He dropped to sit on a step a few up from the bottom, bracing his elbows on his knees. Jules stood nearby, resting one hand on the banister finial.

"I put my neck on the line for you. For both of you. I gave them my word," Greg accused. The last few minutes were spent silently fuming that they've put him in this position. A small, rational, part of him knew it was unfair to blame them completely, yet that's what he was doing right then. He really should assume some of the blame himself, though. He'd begun to suspect months ago that they were back together but had never done anything to prove or disprove the notion…until today.

"Have you seen our performance slip?" Sam retorted defensively. "Has there been one moment-"

"It takes one moment," snapped the team's commander, one arm lifting to point and shake a finger at the couple in front of him. "This whole team is still on probation. Everytime we go out on a call, its put under a microscope. The Priority of Life."

"Boss, we know that," Jules spoke urgently, "We put the lives of the public ahead of each other, ahead of our own That's not going to change."

"You know what the worst part is? I knew. I was hoping I was wrong, but I knew. Now it's my head on the block if this ever comes out."

Further conversation got cut off by the ringing of Greg's cell phone. A second later, first Jules' and then Sam's phone chirped with incoming text messages.

"Gun call in McClendon Park. Team Four's already out-we got upped early," Greg informed the others, rather unnecessarily given the messages they'd also received, as he started for the front door. "And we will pick this up again later."

* * *

"Damn it!" Sam slams his fist against Jules' dashboard in an attempt to vent his frustration.

"Sam—"

"I'm sorry, Jules. I'm sorry. I blew it—again. I should have—"

"Sam!" Jules takes one hand off the steering wheel and reaches over to him, tapping her fingers as close to his mouth as she can get while aiming blind. "It's not your fault."

"I'm the one who just dances downstairs, blathering about breakfast, right in front of the Boss! Of course it's my fault. If I'd just stayed quiet and upstairs…"

"I guess you didn't hear the doorbell ring," Jules sees Sam shake his head out of the corner of her eye. "I didn't know it was him until I opened the door. There was no way I could warn you without giving it away myself. It's no one's fault, Sam. Just an accident."

"An accident? All three of our jobs are on the line! I'd say that's a bit more than an accident."

"Do you regret it?" her words are soft.

"Regret getting caught? Absolutely. Choosing to be with you, no matter what anyone else thinks or says? Never!"

"Me neither. I told you that night: there's no place else I would rather be, no one else I want to be with. That hasn't changed, either."

"What are we going to do?"

"I don't know. I guess it depends on what the Boss decides to do."

"Yeah." And the rest of the trip to the parking garage where Sam had left his car the night before passes in silence. Even though Sam and Jules both know they need to get to SRU fast, to respond to the hot call, they take a moment to embrace tightly, however awkward leaning together over the gearshift is, before Sam exits the Jeep.

* * *

If there is such a thing as "normal" in a profession that involves dealing with people on the worst days and at the worst moments of their lives, then this day is completely normal. Sam backs up Ed, while Jules seconds Greg, all of them fanned out around the man holding the gun in the park. And while Sam and Ed go to help Raf chase down the fleeing young man who'd dropped the bag of money, Jules goes looking for the girl whose 911 call had started their day early.

"Spike, do we have a picture of the girl?"

"Give me a minute," and the techie is as good as his word, quickly searching for and locating a school ID photo of the girl, sending it to Jules' PDA.

"Are you Hannah?" she asks a girl who broke from a cluster of skaters at the sight of Jules' police uniform.

"Yeah."

"Can you tell me what happened?"

"I found the bag of money, called 911. Then the man with the gun ran up and demanded it back. He took my phone and told me to get lost."

"Did he hurt you?"

"No. Scared me a bit, but he didn't hurt me. Really, he didn't even scare me much. I pretended to run away but only until he left. I snuck back with my video camera," and she points to a device attached to her skateboard, "and saw him give the bag of money to another guy—he looked like a teenager, maybe."

"Did you record it?"

"Yeah, I did."

"Great, Hannah. That will really help us."

"Did you get them?"

"We have the man with the gun, and my team is looking for the other person now."

* * *

Even though she knows she should be using the drive to Esme Vargas' home to plan how she'll interview this kidnapping victim, Jules instead can't help but think back to earlier in the morning, and the what-if's. What if she and Sam had gotten around earlier, rather than engaging in a very pleasurable round of wake-up sex? What if Sam hadn't been in the shower when the Boss had rung her doorbell, and thus known to stay upstairs and silent? What if- Her mom had often said, 'If wishes were horses, we'd all have wings' anytime Jules or her brothers had complained about something. _Well_ , she thinks, _no horses or wings here_. Like it or not, she and Sam are busted again, and not knowing what may happen next has her stomach tied up in knots. If the Boss follows the rules—and when does he _not_?—she and Sam will get reported to the Commander and Chief by the end of the day. And then? Reassignment for at least one of them, maybe booted from SRU altogether, suspension, loss of pay…the possibilities are almost endless, and none of them things she wants, not for herself, for Sam, or for the Boss. _What will he do?_ _He said he knew—but for how long? And how? What did we do before today to give it away? If he knew, why didn't he say anything before now?_ Jules stuffs the questions—for which she doesn't have and honestly doesn't want answers—into her inner vault as she pulls up in front of the Vargas home. "Going off comm," she announces to the team.

"Copy that," Sarge replies. "Guns and Gangs has a possible location for M2, so we're meeting up with them to recon and plan. Spike'll send you the address—join us when you can."

"Copy that."

* * *

Planning and executing the infiltration of the flower warehouse brings Sam back to his military days, to a time when things were simpler and the enemy obvious. Now… things are far from simple. He wants to play the game of 'what if', but that's pointless. Jules did wake him up this morning for mind-blowing sex, and he did walk downstairs half dressed to give everything away to their boss. Sam knows he should regret breaking the rules, which he's done both times of starting a relationship with Jules, but he doesn't—now any more than he had before. He definitely won't give Jules up, no matter who lines up against them, and he won't let her walk away from him a second time, though he knows she won't try to do that again. _Focus on the mission, Braddock,_ he delivers the stern self-warning, and practices what he's preaching.

* * *

The team follows the sound of an upset female voice that echoes up from the bowels of the ship.

"Boss, why don't you let me take this?" Jules suggests. "I can build off what I've already established."

"Okay, take it," agrees Greg. It makes sense, both for that reason, and for the fact that both Jules and Esme are women. He's been grateful many times to have Jules on the team to help negotiate with female subjects, or to comfort upset victims—sometimes a female touch has been the best thing the team has been able to offer.

"Esme has a knife in play," Sam announces. "Jules, buy me time to get down there." And he takes off along the elevated gantry in search of another way down to the lower level that will be out of sight of the subject and her brother.

 _'Slow is smooth, smooth is fast, fast is lethal'_ is one of Ed's favorite training sayings. Today they need the first three to try and prevent the fourth. Jules inches forward very slowly, trying to get a better view and judge when she needs to announce her presence to Esme. It will take a smooth and gentle touch to coax this subject down from the threat level red she seems to be at right now. They weren't close enough to hear what might have been said leading up to this moment, but most likely Terran Martin was right and his client said the wrong thing, not knowing what the team now does about Esme and Joaquin's motivation for this kidnapping. Sam will need to be fast to save Hamilton's life given the knife Esme is holding so close to the man's head.

"Twenty seconds away," Sam reports. Jules doesn't acknowledge him; she's waiting to see if Esme will put down the knife like Jules just asked her to do. But she isn't listening—not to Jules, not even to her brother. But Sam's silent approach and sudden disarming of Esme prevents the Boss from having to order Spike to take a Sierra shot.

"I feel sorry for them," Jules voices her feelings to the entire team, after they've handed off custody of the two subjects to the uniformed cops. "She didn't get the help she needed after the kidnapping—if she had, maybe this wouldn't have happened."

"I know, Jules," Greg affirms. "But she will now."

"Yeah—in prison."

"She and her brother kidnapped a man. Esme was inches away from mutilating Hamilton just like the M2 thugs did to her. We can feel empathy for a victim who saw retaliation as her only option and for a brother who just wanted to help his sister, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't face the consequences of what they did," Ed offers.

Spike's mouth twists as he—as they all—see a crying Joaquin put into the back of a squad car. "He's just a kid—and had no record at all before now. Neither did Esme. Maybe that will count for something."

"Boss, what about Terran?" the team leader asks.

"Yeah, we do have to deal with him now, don't we?" the question Greg asks as he begins to walk toward the man standing next to the rescued hostage is rhetorical. "Team, I'll handle this. You pack up and we'll meet back at SRU to debrief."

* * *

"That was a good takedown," Jules tells Sam as they walk away from the cargo ship.

"Good talk," he replies.

"What are we going to do?"

Aware that their mics are still on and transmitting, and knowing that muting his now will not be ideal, Sam remains silent as he considers what—if anything—he might say.

"Good job today," Greg speaks from behind them. The pair stop and turn, exchanging a look along the way. "Again, what did I expect from the Law Enforcement Professional of the Year?"

Jules blinks. Praise for a job well-done—however true it may be—isn't what she expects from their boss right now, not with what he discovered this morning.

"What happens now, Boss?" Sam asks. Yes, Greg had told them that the morning's discussion would be continued later. And later is now. Throughout the day's hot call, it had been brewing in the back of the sergeant's mind. What exactly _will_ happen now? Greg knows exactly what _should_ happen: he ought to go straight to HQ and report the rule break and probation violation to Commander Holleran and Dr. Toth. Per Toth's warning back on the day of the team's last requalification, Sam and Jules would both be suspended, at least temporarily, and at least one of them forced to leave the team, if they rekindled their romance. It was an outcome that clearly neither of the couple wants, not with how they've been keeping this relationship a secret...again. Greg doesn't want to see the team split up, either. Part of what makes Team One the impressive force that it is comes in no small part from how well everyone works together. That seamless merging of skills and abilities, trade-offs in assignments based on those skills and the needs of each hot call.

He's watched both Jules and Sam today, and nothing he's seen or heard would have raised his suspicions beyond where they'd already been. Every word and action has been completely professional. The gunman at the skate park, the infiltration of M2's flower warehouse, even the hostage situation on the freighter at the waterfront. All of it done completely by the book and to the high standards that everyone on his team has always displayed. On the freighter, Jules had kept calm, knowing that Sam was approaching the subject from behind and that the distraught woman could just as easily turn her knife on Sam as on her hostage. And Sam had been just as cool and collected, even with Jules mere feet away from that same knife; he hadn't gone all overprotective boyfriend and inflamed the situation, but instead had coordinated his approach to Jules' delaying negotiation to ensure a good outcome for everyone. So while Parker knows what he _ought_ to do, whether he will actually do it is the question. And based off today, he doesn't _need_ to. Rules are rules, true, but Sam and Jules both have always been exceptional individuals professionally, and that seems to carry over to them as a couple.

After a pause that feels longer than it really is, Greg answers his officer. "We go home, and come back tomorrow and do our jobs."

The couple exchanges a sidelong glance, admirably concealing stunned surprise at their boss' unspoken approbation: if they can handle things going forward like they've done today, he won't be reporting them.

Jules responds quietly, "We won't let you down."

"I have faith," Greg replies. And he does. He just hopes his faith will be justified and not misplaced. Then he turns and walks back to the clearing call scene, while Team One's secret couple continues on toward their SRU vehicle.


	6. 4.10 Wild Card

AN: I know that Greg is aware of the relationship between Sam and Jules now, but the rest of the season still contains some really good moments where Greg notices things about Sam, Jules, or both of them, that I just couldn't leave untouched. So this story will end up spanning the whole course of Season Four. And given the fact that this story has shifted from the original plan of Sarge-only to now including Sam's and Jules' thoughts, plus things that the rest of the team (and Greg) either notice or don't (plus me feeling guilt over the incredibly short intro to this story), I've gone back and added a ton more content to the first chapter "Personal Effects". It's one of my favorite episodes of the entire series, and I just couldn't resist the chance to give you some more JAM.

Xxx

The team exited the briefing room without the conversations or joking that would be typical. Rather than letting the team split into their usual subgroups and pick patrol zones today, Ed had made the assignments arbitrarily today, which hadn’t set well with anyone other than himself, it seemed.

Sergeant Parker had been following his team, but diverted to the dispatcher’s desk when the on-duty dispatcher, Winnie Camden, called him over. After hearing about a distressed customer from the bank manager, Greg grimaced. Law enforcement had encountered a number of similar cases in recent months and this looked to be yet another in the trend.

“Hot call, Winnie,” he told the dispatcher, who immediately triggered the claxon alarm.

"Sam, with me." Ed directed the younger man to ride with him to the hot call. Sam gave him a glance, but headed to the indicated SUV without comment and slid into the driver's seat. They listened over the radio link as Spike explained to Raf the occurrences of robbery-by-proxy that had been taking place with alarming frequency over the past year.

“Okay, Hester sent us a profile on the victim. Robyn Engles,” Jules scanned the information and began relaying it to the rest of the team.

“Okay, we’ve got floor plans here. Hester, can you situate the victim and suspect for us?” Ed asked the bank manager. He flicked a glance over to Sam, but the sniper kept his own eyes firmly fixed on the roadway ahead.

"We're going to go in with flashbangs, disarm him, and get any remaining civilians out of range. You good with that?" Ed asked Sam after announcing the tactical plan.

"All good," was Sam's unemotional reply.

Ed's mind flashed back to the visit he paid to SRU the day the verdict was announced in the Buteau case.

 _"Better watch out. It's growing on me,"_ Sam had said when Ed asked how he liked being Team Leader. Given that Ed had really come to SRU that day in order to submit his resignation to Commander Holleran, it had made him feel good to think that Sam could step up and take his place as Team Leader smoothly--that the team would be in good hands with Sam running tac. He hadn't planned on the invitation to ride along with the team to the courthouse for the verdict's announcement, or that he would become actively involved in the hot call that had evolved from the post-verdict riot, saving Officer Greeley's life when Luc Buteau's girlfriend Poppy had taken him hostage. Ed definitely hadn't expected Sophie to bring Izzy to SRU later that day, or for his wife to reverse her ultimatum to choose between his family and the team. He'd been happy to agree to Sophie's new terms and thus stay on the team, but he hadn't really thought what that would mean for Sam. 

While the transition back to Ed's leadership had gone pretty smoothly, the TL had recently started seeing signs of delayed-onset tension. After he and Sam had worked out the challenges of Sam's top-down placement on the team several years ago, they'd come to a fairly good working relationship. Oh, they still butted heads regularly--an inevitability for two alpha males such as he and Sam, and with their very different definitions of 'risk'--but things had never again gotten as bad as they'd been in the beginning. Nothing like the aftermath of that drug warrant call where he'd shoved Sam up against one of the SUVs and berated him about not acting like one of the team by breaking formation and cover to enter the apartment. No, things had been solid for quite a while now. Lately, though, Sam was challenging him more often, contesting tactical decisions, Sierra assignments and placements--a lot of little things that were minor on their own, but collectively becoming more of a concern. He could see the problem, but not a solution—not yet. It was hard to figure out, because Sam himself was often hard to read. Ed’s action-oriented nature clamored for him to do something, but it had to be the right thing, and he didn’t yet know what that would be.

Entry into the bank was executed perfectly, with most of the team surrounding and subduing the subject while Jules started ushering the flashbang-stunned customers to safety. But then everything started to unravel when the teller disbelievingly told them that the hostage customer had just fled the bank with a different man—and that he might have a gun. Despite all their experience and training, there was a collective moment of physical and mental paralysis, as they tried to wrap their minds around how this hot call had gone ass-over-tea-kettle so quickly. 

"Guys, let's move! They can't have gotten far!" Ed snapped the command and both Sam and Raf followed him from the bank at a run. "Let's go, go, go."

Remaining at the bank with Sarge, Jules tried to figure out what had gone wrong. "We had her safe!" she said in confusion.

"She just sabotaged her own rescue," he confirmed.

"Why is she following him?" Sam asked, not at all out of breath even with the pace he, Ed, and Raf were running at. Why indeed? The subject had no physical contact with her at all right now, so why was the woman running behind him and not stopping or changing direction to get away? But the question dropped in priority when they rounded the corner of a building into an alley to see the subject and victim getting into a parked van. Sam and Raf had to jump out of the way when the van barreled toward them and out onto the street.

"Halt fire! Halt fire! Hostage at risk," Ed commanded, already spinning around to follow the van’s path.

"We're losing him!" Sam objects.

"Too many civilians. He's already opened fire, Sam." Even though he's action-oriented by nature and by job position, Ed knows that shooting back at the subject will only escalate things even further and may well put the hostage in greater danger of getting hit by someone's bullet.

"I'll take out the tires. Immobilize the vehicle," Sam's MP5 rose in preparation.

"You do that, he'll escalate," Ed warned. Immobilizing the van would mean trapping the subject with the hostage inside the vehicle. A trapped subject would be a desperate subject, and one quite likely to view his hostage as an expendable asset in the pursuit of escape.

"He's not on a spree, Ed," countered Sam. “He’s just trying to—“

Ed cut him off. "Sam, this is my call. My call here." He rattled off the license plate details to Winnie for the APB and slapped Sam’s shoulder as he directed the junior officers to head back to the bank and their SUVs.

As they jogged back toward the bank, Sam barely registered Jules narrating what had to be security footage from the bank or Spike identifying the escaped subject as one Dan Lefebvre, a man with a lengthy criminal record. He was focused on what he viewed as Ed's bad call in allowing the subject to get away.

"So we just stand around till some cruiser spots the vehicle halfway out the city?" he groused after they'd slowed to a walk.

"Where we can apprehend him without risk," Ed stated.

"We had him! Before the vehicle ever left the alley, I could've shot the tires!" Heat was rising in Sam's voice.

"I had a shot, too, Ed," mind-mannered Raf contributed.

Irritation spiking in his own tone, Ed stated, "Look, you shoot the tires, the van swerves, he's got his finger on the gun...we might as well shoot her ourselves!"

"She was out of range!" retorted Sam. "The gunman's arm was outside the van."

While Ed would acknowledge the factual truth of Sam's statement, it didn't alter his belief that Robyn Engles had been in danger from the subject. It would have only taken seconds for him to pull his arm back inside the van and shift the gun to point at her and fire, especially if the movement of the swerving van had aided rather than hindered him. And besides, it was over and done. However talented the team was, reversing time to try a different course of action wasn't in any of their skill sets--not even Samtastic's. "Sam, I hear you. Let's just move on here, alright? It's over."

The angry set of Sam's face and body amply informed anyone who cared to look that he still wasn't at all happy about things, but he didn't offer any further verbal response to the Team Leader. Everyone let the topic drop as Spike began to feed them information on the Engles family. 

"Alright, we've got to get there," Greg decided after considering everything that they know or suspect. While his own parenting experience is regrettably limited, he's been a cop and negotiator more than long enough to know that desperation can make even the calmest and most stable person do some pretty drastic things. With the family's car still being at their house and the daughter not being at school, Greg agreed with Jules that it was quite likely that Mrs. Engles' family could well be hostages for her compliance with whatever directions Dan LeFebvre might be giving.

Sam headed to an SUV with Raf this time, Ed jumped in with Spike, and Jules joined Greg for the trip to the Engles' house.

Sergeant Greg Parker lifted one hand from the steering wheel, pulled his comm unit from his belt, and waved it to get the attention of the woman sitting next to him. Once he knew Jules was looking, he overtly flipped the comm unit from his ear and switched it off, gesturing for her to do the same. With both of them now 'running silent' as far as the ever-present autoscriptor was concerned, Greg broached the subject of his concern.

"What's going on with Sam? He's challenging Ed. He’s second guessing orders. He's debriefing in the street, Jules."

"Are you asking me as your teammate right now?" Jules questioned.

"If I was asking you as my teammate, I would keep the headsets on. Hey--I let this thing go on between you means I keep a close eye. That's the deal." It had been the bargain Greg struck with himself when he'd decided not to report Sam and Jules for violating the departmental rule against relationships between teammates as well as the team's current probationary status brought about by his own ill-advised decision to seek outside input for their last requalification psych evaluations. As he'd told Jules and Sam recently when giving them his unspoken blessing: "I have faith." He does, but for his own peace of mind, as well as the team's professional well-being, he had decided to keep an eye on the clandestine couple. If it looked like they might be headed for trouble, he could hopefully intervene in time to avert major damage.

Jules sighed heavily, clearly thinking. Greg realized he was putting Jules into a bit of an awkward position by asking her to 'tell on' Sam, her boyfriend, but as the team's commander, he needed to know if one of his officers had a problem.

"Well, I think that it's been hard for him, Boss. He ran tac for five months while Ed was recovering."

"And he did a good job," Greg has no issues or qualms with saying that to anyone. 

"Maybe he feels like he's got more to offer than he gets to give." Greg could see her point--and wasn't really too surprised. To be honest, Greg rather wondered why it took so long for this issue to arise. After taking seven bullets from the gun of a mentally-unbalanced and drug-addicted war correspondent while on the way to the hospital for his daughter's birth, Ed was out on medical leave recovering for more than four months. During that time, Sam had functioned as the team's tactical leader--and done so in an exemplary fashion. Greg had been the first to acknowledge and praise how much Sam had grown and matured as an SRU officer from the quick-action, take-down over talk-down, point-and-shoot soldier he'd been at the time he'd joined Team One. Sam had been able to showcase extensive tactical skills, and the strategic awareness to know when and how to best apply--or not apply--the abilities that he and his teammates possessed. When Ed had returned to duty, Sam had gracefully and without complaint stepped back down into a subordinate role. For the months since that time, the dynamic shift hasn't seemed to be a significant problem for either Sam or Ed--until today, that is. After getting such an extensive taste of command experience, it was only to be expected that having his opinions now overruled with Ed's ‘When you're the democratically elected leader, you get to make the autocratic decisions’ philosophy would grate on Sam in ways it hadn't before. The team will surely hash this out later during the debrief, but no one could ever know for sure if Sam's tactical suggestion would have worked just as well--or better--than Ed's, or if it would have been fatal for the hostage as Ed had said.

"I think it's more than that, Jules. Sam gets his own team—it doesn't just help his career."

"I know. We both know. But then he wouldn't be working with the best, Boss." The simple acknowledgment that the team's secret couple realized that everything about their relationship can be legitimized if Sam moved to another team encouraged Greg, both professionally and personally. Job-wise, Sam might well be hitting the proverbial glass ceiling, where being the subordinate was a source of frustration and mounting friction. However much he doesn't want to lose Sam to another team, Greg knows that he can't stand in the way of Sam's professional advancement, any more than he could for Rollie, or for anyone else who'd served under him in the past. Tim's departure had brought Spike to the team, Chris' transfer had gained them Jules, and Rollie's promotion had opened the spot for Sam. All of the changes slightly bittersweet from saying goodbye, but so much good had come with each of the new members the team had gained. On a more personal note, Greg is happy that Sam and Jules seem to be thinking 'long-term' where their relationship is concerned. The visibly close friendship that they've been able to use as camouflage to conceal their deeper romantic connection bodes well for them making this last and grow. Greg recalls Ed saying--back when they'd found out about the first dating and decided how and when to confront Sam about it--that he hadn't seen them as a couple. The team sergeant hadn't commented either affirmatively or negatively at the time--rather, he'd asked how Ed had known about the secret romance--but now...he fully disagrees with his TL's assessment. The more he's watched Sam and Jules over recent months, the more convinced Greg has become that they are a good fit as life partners, above and beyond their compatibility as members of the same team and a frequent sub-pairing within the team. This job is a hard one, as Greg well knows, so if they have each found in the other a source of strength to endure the rough shifts and hard decisions that are the bread-and-butter of SRU, then that can only be to the good. He remembers how much Wordy depended on his wife and girls while he was still with the team. Now, Ed has Sophie and their kids, and Greg himself has his newfound--if long distance--relationship with his son, along with the whatever-it-is that may be developing between himself and Marina Levin. But the single members of the team: Spike, Raf, Sam and Jules... Who do they have? Only Raf and Sam have any family close by, and that's limited to a single relative each; Spike and Jules don't even have that. It was probably only because there have only been three women to make it into the SRU that the issue of personal relationships impacting job performance hadn't come up long before now. Which was, of course, a complete double standard, Greg knew.

With a sigh, Greg reinserted his earpiece as Jules did the same thing. "Alright. Let's see what we can dig up on the Engles'."

\-----

“Husband’s immobilized. He’s vulnerable,” Raf reported off the handheld thermal imager. “The daughter’s in range of the gun, too.”

“We have to isolate him,” Ed said of the gunman.

“I got a plan,” stated Sam. It only took a few moments for the smoke grenade to set off the home’s fire alarm and distract the gunman long enough for the team to make entry.

“Don’t move,” Sam ordered. Then, “Subject’s secure,” as he looked up at Ed.

“Good job,” the TL offered the approval.

Using just their eyes and facial expressions, Ed proposed and Sam agreed to a ‘good cop/bad cop’ strategy to get the subject to share information. Inside, Greg and Jules spoke with Robyn’s husband, Tim. Jules’ earlier feeling that something just didn’t feel right about this whole situation suddenly made sense when Tim revealed that it was actually Robyn—not him—who had a gambling problem. Dan Lefebvre’s involvement began to make more sense, too, once the gunman revealed that Dan worked for Harvey Micks and had a noon deadline to repay the money he’d stolen to cover Robyn’s gambling debt—Robyn, who he had a thing for. Clearly, men in love—or lust—were no less susceptible to desperate actions than mothers were.

“Okay, let’s get to the casino,” Ed gestures to the team and all head to vehicles. 

“Greg, Jules, with me. Let’s see what’s down this alley. Sam, you and Raf head down John Street. Spike, see what you can pull up in the truck,” Ed dealt out orders and everyone got moving to recon the location.

“Sam, what’s the John Street exit look like?” Spike asked.

“Okay…metal door, no handle, and there’s a security camera.”

“No stealth entry,” Raf said.

“It’s a problem,” Sam agreed.

While Spike worked to hack the building’s wireless network to get access to the camera system, the rest of the team began plotting out a strategy for dealing with Dan LeFebvre.

“I’ll go in undercover,” decided Ed. “Let Robyn know her family is safe, then there’s nothing to keep her there. What do you think?”

“Can’t just pull up a chair and have a chat,” Jules noted.

“Jules, I can if I have cards in my hand. Place like this, they’re looking for trouble. They frisk me and find a gun, it’s all over, so no weapon and no wire.”

“Okay, button mic,” Sam spoke over the comm channel. “We hear what Ed hears. I’ll hotwire the van, block the John Street exit. We secure the alley and stealth the service entrance.” From his observation spot in the alley with Greg and Jules, Ed nodded in silent agreement. The tactical plan Sam just offered was a good one.

A call to the Vice division of the Toronto Police Department garnered the team a player’s name and account card that Ed would be able to use, which he picked up on his way back to the scene after going to his house to change into a suit. Spike tracked him all the way into the casino, before switching focus to the exterior cameras to allow for Sam’s placement of the van, and in short order the team was in position outside the casino’s doors.

“Guys, Ed’s been made,” Spike reported, after Dan’s boss appeared on the casino floor and tagged Ed as a cop. “Weapon’s out. Go, go go!”

Sam had been hyper-focused from the moment Ed went in, knowing that the smallest mistake could cost his TL his life today. Unlike the day he’d been shot by Colin Potter, today Ed had no body armor to absorb a bullet’s impact. The moment Spike called out the need to move, Sam was in motion, leading the team into the casino. Dan took advantage of the chaos to grab Robyn’s arm and pull her into the hallway that lead to the John Street exit, with Ed in pursuit.

“Dan can’t get out that way. Ed knows we’re here. He’ll bring Dan back toward us. Fall back and take cover,” Sam ordered. “I’ll take point.”

With the casino cleared of the presence of the gamblers, employees, and a handcuffed Harvey Micks, the team waited to see how Ed’s negotiation would unfold. 

Emerging back onto the casino floor from the exit hallway, Ed saw the entire team fanned out across the space, covering all angles on the subject and his hostage. Sam was front and center, MP5 at the ready. Two pairs of blue eyes locked into contact.

 _I know you got this_ , Ed conveyed. _I trust you._

The call ended quickly after Robyn Engles called bluff on Dan’s threat to shoot her and stepped away from him.

“Don’t raise your weapon, Dan,” Sam warned. With a sob, Dan let Ed take the gun away.

"Sam, good work," Ed praised his stand-in. He and Sam exchanged glances and small smiles before Ed walked away.

xxx

Back at SRU, the team sat around the conference table dissecting the call.

"That's the thing," commented Jules. "We'll never know. Maybe Dan _would_ have shot Robyn--intentionally or not--if the van's tires had been shot out. Or Dan's partner might have shot Tim or Amy to show their resolve when the plan fell apart. Dan could have turned today into a random spree. Any or all of those things could have happened if you'd fired, Sam. But," and her gaze shifted to Ed next, "maybe you wouldn't have ended that call staring down the barrel of a gun held by a desperate man if Sam _had_ shot out the tires. No body armor today, Ed. What would we have told Sophie, and Clark, and Izzy if you’d gotten shot again?"

A few minutes later: "So, Samtastic! You know how to hotwire a van? Carryover from a misspent youth?" Spike got odd looks from everyone around the table. "What?"

Sam shook his head and snorted at Spike. "More like Special Forces training, actually. A few times out on missions we needed to make fast ex-fils and had to appropriate handy local transport in the process. How did you get hold of that highly illegal password cracking software?"

Greg looked between the pair and sighed--albeit with a smile. "I think maybe we need a team policy to never ask either of you exactly how it is that you know how to do all the stuff you know how to do. Less stressful that way."

"Saves time, too, right?" chuckled Raf.

“Okay, Team, “ Greg closed the folder on the hot call. “This was a tough day, but everyone walked away safe and sound today. We did our jobs. Now, go home. See you all tomorrow.”

After everyone else had left, Ed walked back into the briefing room to find Greg still sitting at the large conference table. "What's going on?"

"So, Sam," Greg began. "You two pulled it together on that call."

"Yeah," Ed agreed, dropping into a chair on the opposite side of the table from his friend and sergeant.

"He's good."

"I know he is," Ed affirmed Greg's assessment. 

"He's hitting the glass ceiling."

Ed couldn’t disagree, and didn’t. It was honestly probably a surprise that it hadn't happened before now. While Ed wouldn't have foreseen this back in the beginning, he could now easily accept the fact that Sam Braddock is most definitely Team Leader material. On one hand exists a good feeling at knowing that he could well have groomed his own successor, that Team One developed such a high-caliber leadership-worthy member in this once-cocky former soldier, but at the same time it made Ed feel a bit old--even more so than a twenty-plus year career, teenage son, and infant daughter already did.

"He wants to lead a team," Ed stated the obvious.

"Something like that," Greg confirmed what he could while still keeping his personal vow that only he would know the truth about Sam and Jules, that Ed's hands would be kept clean if this blew up in everyone's faces.

"Something you're not saying?" Ed seemed to perceive Greg's reticence.

"What I'm saying is that you, my friend, are not going anywhere."

"You know...I don't know. Maybe we could let him spread his wings a bit?"

"Run a few calls. Give him incentive." Greg picked up on the thought.

"Or we give him your job. Put him in the truck, requisition a dress..."

"You know I outrank you, right?" Greg pointed to the insignia on his sleeve.

"That's funny," Ed snorted. The team's two leaders laughed, pleased to have a plan in development. By no means is it a permanent fix and both know that. One day Sam really would shatter the ceiling and be ready for a permanent role as a Team Leader. Neither Greg nor Ed wanted to stand in the way of that...one day. But for now, they held the desire to do everything they could to keep Team One running smoothly as the well-oiled machine that it had become in recent years--something that was in no small part owed to Sam's placement with them.

"Now, go home, Ed. Spend some time with your family tonight."

xxx

Spike gave Babycakes a final goodbye pat before exiting his tech lab and preparing to leave.

"You and Ed going to be okay?" he heard Jules ask Sam.

"Yeah, I guess. I just--"

"You're frustrated. I get it. Sarge does, too."

"He does?" There was an odd note to Sam's tone.

"He asked me about it. So I put my mad skills to good use and extrapolated that following orders isn't quite as appealing to you as it used to be."

Spike heard a soft snorted chuckle from Sam. "You profiled me to the Boss?"

"I guess I did. You got a problem with that?"

"If I do?"

"Would a beer and burrito bribe cover my debt?"

"Yeah. I think it just might. With room for a tip, even."

They rounded the corner of the hallway then and saw Spike.

"Hey," Jules greeted him. "We're going to go grab something to eat. You want to come?"

"Sorry. I--uh, I've actually got plans already." With a deep breath, Spike looked directly into Sam's eyes. "With Natalie."

The sniper was silent for a minute, and his expression gave nothing away. "Okay. Next time maybe."

"Sure. Absolutely." Spike dashed off, relieved that Sam hadn't bitten his head off. From a few things Natalie had said--and the fact that Sam hadn't said anything about her before she arrived in Toronto--Spike knew that the siblings weren't very close. But that didn't mean Sam was a fan of a teammate being interested in his little sister. Fortunately, however, Sam seemed to be trying to mind his own business--for which Spike was grateful. He'd been as nervous as on a bomb call back at Valentine's Day when he'd spontaneously--and without cluing Sam in ahead of time--invited Natalie to join the three of them at the club to hear Raf's band play. Thankfully, though, Sam hadn’t made a big deal of it—Spike thought the “Be nice” that Jules whispered to him might have helped with that.

As he slid into his car to go pick Natalie up, Spike hoped that Jules might be able to use this dinner with Sam to scope out what was going on with him, if it was anything more than the feeling of being stifled that she’d mentioned a few minutes ago. It worried Spike that his friend and his Team Leader had lately seemed to be reverting back to their old habit of going at each other like a pair of pit bulls over practically any tactical plan or decision. That had been something they'd long ago worked out--or so he'd thought until now. Or maybe he was just making a mountain out of a molehill. The end-of-shift debrief had been quite calm compared to the heated exchange between the snipers during the hot call.

The ringing of his cell phone pulled Spike away from his thoughts. “Hi, Natalie. Yeah, I’m on my way. Be there in twenty.”

xxx

"That was close," Jules sighed.

"Agreed," Sam echoed her exhalation. He thought about their conversation and couldn't see anything that would have been out of place for teammates and friends to be saying. 

"Sorry about just blurting out that invite to Spike. It just happened."

"That's okay. It didn't sound odd or anything. Actually, it would have been weird if we _hadn't_ asked him to join us."

“Not that we’re going to complain about him being busy, though, right?”

"Yeah, I guess."

"You still don't really like it, do you? Spike and Natalie?"

"I don't want him to get hurt," Sam said. "Spike's been through enough. Lou, his mentor from 52 Division, his dad dying... Natalie isn't always the most considerate person where others are concerned. I'm not saying she'd do something to hurt him deliberately, but she doesn't always think of others, what they might need, or how her words or actions may affect them. She isn't cruel. Just thoughtless sometimes."

Jules couldn't argue the point. Leaving aside that back at Valentine’s Day Natalie had nearly busted her and Sam to the team on their secret relationship, there was the fact that Nat had been in Toronto for six months now and was still living in Sam's apartment--the work she'd been able to find not being sufficient to afford an apartment of her own. It was definitely over the line of cramping Sam's style now--especially since Natalie’s involvement with Spike meant he might drop by the apartment unannounced, which could cause problems for all of them if Jules happened to be there at the time. The same thing was true for going out somewhere, with a risk that Spike and Natalie might also be out and the two couples would happen to cross paths. So it was Jules' house for them almost exclusively right now. And on that thought...

"What do you say to getting those burritos and beers to go?"

She asked the question, unnecessarily, as Sam’s “Copy that!” confirmed his approval of the plan.

As they cuddled on her couch later that night, Jules rested her head on Sam’s shoulder. "Ed was right. You did good today."

“Really?”

“What, you need an ego boost? Well, in that case…” And in a flash, Jules was on Sam’s lap, framing his face with her hands, plundering his mouth.

“Copy that,” breathed Sam, when Jules let him up for air. With a twist of his body, they were flat on the couch. “Let’s discuss more about just how good I am.”

\----

AN: Thanks to missblueeyes63 for asking about Spike knowing/not knowing about Sam/Jules. I'd touched on everyone else on the team by this point, but not him, and looking at that review comment again reminded me that I can't leave Spike out.


	7. 4.11 A New Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AN: I didn't originally plan to cover the chapter with Donna's wedding in it because the honeymoon talk is recapped in the "Priority of Life" episode that will be coming up next in this story, but I decided that doing it anyway would let me explore more team dynamics and more JAM.

"Okay, it's end of shift. Good job everyone. We kept the peace, now it's time to head home."

"Greg..."

"Right, Ed. Team, our beloved TL will not be with us tomorrow, as he's been called to a higher duty."

"Baby duty?" teased Spike.

"Father of the bride, actually," Ed retorted.

"Right. Donna's getting married tomorrow, isn't she?" asked Jules.

"Yep, and I'm giving the bride away."

"So, since Ed will be otherwise occupied--being in two places at once not falling within his skill set--the baton will be passed to the exemplary Constable Sam Braddock to carry the torch as Team Leader for the day. I assume that's okay with you, Sam?" Greg extended the offer in a teasing tone of voice.

"I'd say yes without hesitation, Boss," Sam began, "but the way all that syrup got spread on top of the invitation makes me wonder if I'd be better off saying 'no'. Raises the question of what you've got planned for us tomorrow."

Everyone grinned, even Greg and Ed.

"Just a patrol day unless the city's less-than-desirable elements have other ideas."

xxxx

That night, long after Jules had succumbed to post-sex sleep, Sam lay awake in the bed. Ever since the blow-up between him and Ed during the hot call that had morphed from a hostage rescue in a bank to the infiltration of an illegal casino, he'd noticed Ed making more of an effort to listen to input when Sam offered it, or to explain a bit of why suggestions weren't followed, on top of actually stepping back several times and letting Sam function as Team Leader while himself shifting down into a subordinate tactical role. Even though there was that saying "thinking you're ready for something really only proves that you really aren't", Sam didn't believe it applied here. After so many years in the military and then SRU, he believed that his evaluation of his own abilities was fair and objective. But his opinion wasn't the only one around or the most important one where this decision was concerned. Any opportunities that he had to demonstrate his skills for the people who mattered were welcomed, and he was glad that tomorrow would give him another chance.

Sam's relationship with Donna had always carried a thread of tension in it. He'd been just as bothered as Jules was when Donna had been selected as her replacement--both because Jules' injuries had been bad enough to require an extended recovery period, and because it meant she was no longer the only woman in SRU. Sam had been thrilled that Donna had taken the open spot on Team Three when Jules had been ready to return to duty and he had warmed up to Donna more when he didn't see her as professional competition for the woman he loved. Still, enough distance had remained between him and Donna that it had been a bit of a surprise when he’d learned that she was engaged to be married, as she’d seemed wed to the job. Being a cop made family life a challenge, as the Boss and Ed both knew full well; Wordy had seemed to be the exception when it came to a completely happy marriage.

 _"What would it be like if--?"_ Sam shut down that thought before it could fully form. If he couldn't even be open to people other than the Boss and Natalie about his relationship with Jules, then he had no business whatsoever even _fantasizing_ about taking that step into marriage; not now, and not for who-knew how long.No business, and yet he couldn't entirely prevent it. It was one reason why he wanted to prove that he was ready to take on the TL role on a permanent basis. He and Jules wouldn't have to hide anymore and he could empty that specially designated bank account...

xxxx

“Team One, hot call,” Winnie addressed them over the comm channel. “We have 911 reports of a gunshot at 2815 Kensington.”

“Copy that, Winnie,” Sam took the lead in responding. “Any information on a victim or subject?”

“Sorry, no. Caller’s a stay-at-home mom who’s hiding inside. Heard a gunshot at the house across the street right after a car pulled into the driveway. Didn’t see anyone and doesn’t want to go look.”

“Have 911 tell the caller to stay inside where it’s safe. Okay, Team, here’s the plan. Spike and Raf, you’ll be with me and we’ll approach from the west on foot. Boss, Jules, you stay in the vehicle and out of sight. Subject may still be in the vicinity and we need the option of fast pursuit on wheels if necessary.”

“Copy that, Sam.”

Within a few minutes, the acting Team Leader had confirmed the death of the woman inside the car, cleared the house and sent Spike and Raf to survey the neighborhood. Jules used 911 chatter to vector Raf in to intercept the subject spotted running from the area.

“Subject down,” Raf reported. “Hit by a car on Davenport.”

Sam thought that Raf’s voice sounded odd. He was still very much the team’s rookie and had never taken a lethal shot. Of course, Raf hadn't shot this subject and wasn’t responsible for the man running into the path of the car, either, but he was sure to blame himself anyway. Seeing someone die wasn’t easy for any of them, regardless of the circumstances. 

"Raf? Are you okay?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. I--I'll--"

"Winnie, dispatch a uni to Raf's location to take charge of the subject's body. Raf, head back here when you can, okay?"

"Okay, Sam."

Raf returned to the original crime scene with the dead suspect's wallet, which he handed to Inspector Stainton. Mere moments later, Jules interrupted Greg Parker's conversation with the Inspector.

"Boss!"

"Yeah?"

"Just got off the phone with Ed. He's at a shots-fired call."

"He's at Donna's wedding," Parker protested.

"That's where the shots were fired," she replied.

xxxx

The city park location of Donna's wedding was a scene of chaos, with stunned guests milling around, overturned chairs, and a bloodstained stage. The minister helpfully pointed out the direction in which the gunman--and Ed--had run.

"Okay. Raf, you take east; I'll take west," Sam gave the order and put action to words. A minute or so later, Greg's side of a phone conversation--clearly with Ed--was heard over the radio.

"Sam, Ed says to head through the park to the Marina. Find Dock 4."

"Copy that." Sam poured on speed. Given that Ed had been attending a wedding and not going to work, he wasn't armed. And even if Ed was confident about taking on a revolver-wielding gunman while unarmed, Sam had no intention of letting his Team Leader hang out to dry. He caught sight of Ed running down the dock in pursuit of the subject at remarkable speed given his suit and dress shoes. Sam veered onto the parallel Dock 3 and raced down to the end, then across the perpendicular dock that connected Docks 3 and 4, arriving just after the subject got tackled by Ed. 

"They never count the shots," noted Ed, as Sam tossed the gun away from the subject's reach.

As they walked back to the wedding location, the pair discussed how Ed had known what was going on and Ed teased Sam about watching the History Channel to learn things.

“You should look into that,” he tapped Sam’s chest.

“Planning on it. Just waiting till I’m 70, sir.”

Ed chuckled at the retort.

Greg looked up when they approached him. “So, your guy talking?”

Sam fielded the answer. “No, but he’s got a record. B&E and assault. Liam Garvis.”

“Garvis?” Greg looked at his notes. “That call we had earlier…that kid’s name was Garvis, too. Could be related.”

Sam had to agree. Two hot calls in one day, both with a subject named Garvis—it couldn’t be a coincidence.

“Who was the vic in that shooting?” Ed asked.

“We don’t know yet,” Greg told him.

Sam pulled his phone out of his vest pocket. “I’ll find out. Maybe there’s a connection to Donna’s friend.”

xxx

“I don’t know anything about any of this,” Hank told Jules.

She looked at him in sympathy. “You aren’t supposed to.”

“This must seem pretty normal to you, right? Because of what you do? What Donna does?”

Jules shook her head. “Normal? No. No, this is never normal. It’s just…it’s the job.”

After Hank left in the ambulance with his friend Pete and Donna went with Ed, Jules surveyed the scene. Normal? No, days like this weren’t normal. The best man at a cop’s wedding generally didn’t get shot as soon as the ‘I do’s’ were spoken. Part of her wondered if this was a life that Hank was really prepared to live on the fringes of. Could a mild-mannered IT guy really understand the life of a hard-driving cop like Donna, much less support her the way she’d need him to in order to be able to do her job? In a burst of enlightenment, Jules suddenly wondered if that was why none of the guys she’d dated before Sam had ever lasted more than a few dates. On paper they’d all been good guys, the kind any woman would want, but… She’d never been able to tell any of them more than surface details about her work. Either they’d been the “woman shouldn’t do that” type or they’d gone queasy or shivery at the idea of guns, bombs, violence and the like. So they’d never lasted, because they could never understand what she did and why she had to do it. But Sam had. Sam did. Sam understood her in a way that none of them ever had. He knew the weight of taking a Scorpio shot and ending a subject’s life, the pain of giving everything attempting to connect with the subject only to lose them, and the joy of making a difference and keeping innocent people safe. Sam understood it all and her, where her past civilian boyfriends hadn’t. Only Steve had come close—a paramedic’s job seeing the worst side of life much like cops did. But even he hadn’t truly gotten it—and they’d both almost paid the price for it inside that café.

Jules was pulled from her thoughts back to the hot call when Raf ID’d one of the wedding fight distracters as being the brother of the day’s two other identified subjects and relayed that the trio had ties to a notorious crime group: the Logan Family. The attack on Donna’s wedding made sense—she’d been one of the cops involved in an undercover operation that had taken down the family’s head and sent him to prison. And when Sam reported that the dead woman from the first hot call was the estranged wife of a cop—another cop from that undercover task force—it was clear to all of them that somehow the names of the cops involved in the Logan case had become known and someone was seeking revenge.

Greg Parker slapped his leg. “Okay, Team. There are four other undercover cops from that operation that we need to track down, locate and then get to safety. Winnie, we need addresses for Greg Duceppe, Phil Laputo, Jerry Whittier, and William Kedrick.”

In short order, two of the four were under police protection.

“We’re still looking for Whittier,” Sam reported.

“Neighbor says he plays racquetball every week. Same time, same place,” Spike added.

“Jules, you close to there?” Greg asked after Spike had provided the address.

“I’m on my way.”

“Sam, Spike, back her up, okay?”

xxx

“Jerry Whittier?” Jules approached a middle-aged man walking with a woman across the open top level of the sports club’s parking garage. With an affirmative answer, she began to explain the threat against him. But it was cut short when gunfire erupted and bullets began to impact the vehicles near them.

“Gun it! Let’s go!” Sam ordered from the passenger seat of the SUV he and Spike were in. Instantly Spike pressed his foot down on the accelerator and flipped on the lights and sirens.

“Sam?” Jules called out over the radio link.

“Jules, we’re two blocks away!”

It took every ounce of willpower that Sam possessed not to react to the sounds of gunfire and shattering glass that registered loud and clear over the team's comm channel. Jules was right there, in the target zone, surely putting herself between the gunman and the innocent couple he was trying to shoot. Even though part of him wanted to send the tactical plan to hell and use his own body to shield Jules, Sam stayed in formation and kept ascending in the stairwell that she’d directed them to, with Spike backing him up. 

“Sam?”

“We’re seconds away, Jules!” His voice was imbued with confidence that she could hold out until they arrived. Sam emerged into the sunlight and saw the subject mere feet away, gun lifting and pointing toward Jules' head--her head that was looking the other way. Sam certainly didn't and wouldn't feel any guilt over the lethal shot that took down the subject who would have/had fired on Jules and the retired cop and his wife--not that he would say that to SIU, of course. 'Subject was an active shooter firing on two civilians and an officer. He was preparing to fire at Constable Callaghan and any action other than that of lethal force would have resulted in her death. The subject was a clear and present threat to innocent lives, and lethal action is authorized under those circumstances, even without a direct Scorpio command.' would be how he'd phrase it.

“Who’s the subject officer?” An approaching SIU officer asked. Sam raised one hand in acknowledgment.

When he got to Sam’s side, the officer inquired, “Is the call completed now?”

Sam stated, “No. We still have at least one subject at large.”

“Understood. I’ll take your hand piece and direct you to come to SIU headquarters after this call is completed for our interview.”

“Copy that.”

xxx

The team, plus Donna, gathered to discuss their next move. Greg shared that the man wearing a cop’s ring who he and Raf had seen leaving the Logan’s Bar when they’d gone to talk to the now-widow of the crime family boss had just been identified as a man with ties to the Family: Peter Greene.

“No! Bill isn’t involved in his,” Donna stubbornly defended her former partner even when faced with photos of Greene outside Bill’s apartment building.

“You know, the gunman got the jump on me because he went after Carol,” Jules reflected. “We thought he was after Whittier, but he was actually after Whittier’s wife.”

Ed picked up the thought. “The first shooting today, the victim was a cop’s wife.”

“They weren’t ever trying to get to cops,” Sam put it all together.

“No. They’re after the wives—and your husband,” Jules looked over at Donna as she spoke. Instantly, the other woman had her phone to her ear. She reported that Hank had just left the hospital with a plainclothes cop—just as Ed got a call from the unis he’d spoken with outside Bill’s building reporting that he was nowhere to be found.

“No one helped him,” Donna said over the radio as they raced across the city following the GPS signal from Hank’s phone. “Even me. The day of his hearing, I was supposed to be there. I was planning to be there, but I was with SRU by then, we had a hot call…I wasn’t there.”

xxx

“Hank!” Donna screamed her new husband’s name as she raced across the warehouse to where he lay on the ground, three bullet wounds in his back blossoming red over his white dress shirt. Ed stopped beside them, as the rest of the team ran through the building in pursuit of Kedrick.

“Drop your weapon! Drop it!” Sam shouted when Kedrick was cornered in the bowels of the building.

Greg had barely started negotiating when Donna appeared and strode through the ring of Team One officers to stand in front of Bill Kedrick. She didn’t even seem to hear Ed tell her she was in the line of fire.

“What did you do?” she snarled at her ex-partner, drawing her weapon and leveling it at the man.

“Where were you, Don? Where were you?” Kedrick’s voice was both agonized and accusatory.

An increasingly bitter exchange took place, with Bill blaming her for abandoning him, while Donna accused him of pushing her away and then shooting her husband in the back.

“I did it to save you!” Bill tried to excuse his action. “They would have killed you if I didn’t. Ida Logan ordered it.” Then he collapsed to the ground.

But when the team started to take him into custody, Donna pointed her gun at the ceiling and fired a single shot.

“Donna, you’re a police officer!” Ed reminded her.

“I don’t care what I am,” she retorted. Everyone on the team held their breaths, hoping that Ed could talk Donna down before she shot Kedrick—or before they had to shoot her. Protocol was clear; by rights they should be aiming at Donna already, with Kedrick on the ground and now unarmed, and Donna’s fired round making her an active shooter. But they all held off on that, hoping and praying that they wouldn’t have to shoot a colleague.

“You shoot him, you lose everything,” warned Ed.

“You know the life I wanted—and he took it away!” 

But after Greg told Donna that Hank was asking for her, she let Ed take her gun and ran to her husband unhindered by the team. Once they were alone, they exchanged collective glances.

“Did that just happen?” Jules asked.

“Yeah.” Greg pulled off his cap and rubbed his face and head.

"What's going to happen? What Donna almost did..." Spike trailed off. 

“Shouldn’t define her career regardless of whether or not it is the last thing she does in SRU,” insisted Ed.

“Eddie?”

“It can wait, Boss. But Donna did say this morning that she was planning to retire after the honeymoon.”

"Team, let’s focus on what we still need to do. Based on Kedrick’s statement, we have two subjects to locate and detain. Let’s get moving,” Greg got the team refocused and moving.

xxxx

"How's Hank doing?" Greg asked when Ed walked up to where Team One had gathered outside the Logan's' bar after watching uniformed officers escort Ida Logan and Peter Greene out of the building in handcuffs. 

"He's gonna pull through."

"Good," Greg nodded in relief. The mere thought that Donna--a friend and former teammate--could have been widowed on her wedding day was a thought almost too terrible to even consider.

"So much for the honeymoon," observed Jules.

"You really think she'll leave Team Three?" Sam asked. His tone suggested he wasn't sure it would happen, even if Donna had by Ed’s account sounded sure about it that morning. But if she did retire...it was hard for Sam to quash the selfish desire that Donna would follow through on her plan. If she left SRU, and the TL for Team Three bumped up to Sergeant, as was often the case, then...

"We'll see how she feels after four weeks of doing nothing all day," Greg replied noncommittally. He knew what had to be behind Sam's question, and wasn't sure which outcome would end up being best for everyone and for SRU.

"I mean, she can't give up that easy," Ed noted.

"No," Greg's answer now was as neutral as his last one. No, it wouldn't be easy for someone who'd served as long as Donna had to leave the life--they'd seen that with Danny Rangford and too many others--but almost seeing her new husband die, almost shooting the former partner who'd shot Hank, thinking about what she might want for her future...maybe leaving would be worth it for Donna Sabine Gerald, regardless of how hard it might be.

He, Ed, and Spike began walking away, to verify that the scene was secure before handing it over to the regular cops. Sam and Jules headed for their SUV parked across the street.

"Hypothetically, you like the idea of a honeymoon?" Jules asked as they walked toward their SRU SUV.

"Hypothetically, I love it," Sam replied.

"Please tell me it isn't daiquiris on a beach!" begged his secret girlfriend.

Sam grinned wickedly. "Extreme hiking, remote trails, no bathrooms."

Jules looked over at him in approval. She's never been the beachy-type, and it was nice to hear that Sam wasn't, either. Then again, after all those years over in the desert while he'd been in the military, it would be understandable why Sam might have an aversion to sand if he could help it. 

"Sweet," she dragged out the word. "Sign me up."

"What, you mean with you?" Sam gave her a look of mock surprise. After glancing around to check that they were out of sight of their teammates, Jules launched her fist in a lightning move that connected with Sam's arm in a solid punch. 

In the SUV, Sam pulled out his cell phone and called the number on the card given to him after the shooting by the SIU officer assigned to the incident.

"This is Sam Braddock, SRU Team One. Letting you know that the hot call has ended and I'm available for debrief at any time."

"When can you arrive?”

A quick tapping on the vehicle's GPS unit had the answer.

"I'll be waiting for you when you get here."

"Jules, can you drop me off at SIU?”

With her nod, Sam addressed his next comment to Greg. "Boss, going to SIU now. I'll be back to HQ as soon as I can."

"Copy that, Sam. Did you call the lawyer?"

"Next step."

"Good. We'll wait on you to debrief, so don't worry if SIU takes a while."

xxx

“Any problems with SIU?” Greg asked as Sam walked into the briefing room barely an hour later.

“No. In and out. Obviously justified use of force.” Sam sat down in his usual seat at the table, opened the water bottle waiting there for him and took a drink before starting in on the accompanying snack.

The team’s debrief went smoothly at the beginning. Ed shared what had happened before and during the wedding shooting, and the team provided more details about the shooting of the cop’s wife. Things got a little more heated as the debrief shifted to the topic of Bill Kedrick and Donna.

"Do you think they crossed the line? Donna and Kedrick?" Raf asked.

"Do you?" Sam asked.

"I don't know," the rookie admitted. "I never did any undercover work during my time in the regular police force, before I got into SRU, so I don't know what that’s like."

“None of us have,” Jules told him. “But we all know the deal. A good UC will play a role all day, every day. Donna said this op lasted for a year. Ed, you said Donna told you that she and Kedrick were close—that it was just the two of them. Isolated from everyone else…

"Maybe it crossed over from pretend into reality?" suggested Greg.

"Maybe. It might be a reason why Kedrick went over the edge after the task force ended. If he felt more for Donna than she did for him...if it had become real for him but was just part of the story for her..."

Ed spoke slowly and deliberately. “She said he fell apart afterward. That everyone else moved on but Kedrick didn’t.”

"Going back to 'real life' as a regular cop probably would have been hard enough for Kedrick to adjust to, after the constant pressure and adrenaline rush of being undercover," Sam mused. "If he thought that he'd be making a real go of things with Donna, and then she let him know that wasn't happening...yeah, I could see him snapping."

"Have you seen that before?" Spike inquired.

He nodded. "Yeah, unfortunately. A few guys who got home after a long deployment only to have their wives serve them with divorce papers the second they got in the front door, or who walked into their houses to find no one there at all... It's hard enough for guys to come home and leave the war overseas--too many bring PTSD, nightmares, and physical wounds back with them. That's bad enough. But when they've been clinging to the thoughts of home, spouses and kids...all of it as the reasons for why they wore the uniform and made the sacrifices...and then to lose what they'd been fighting for. Yeah. Too many snap. Eat their guns or do something insane to provoke suicide-by-cop. That or drugs and alcohol, addictions to painkillers..."

"You aren't like them, Sam. You didn't take that path," Jules assured him, leaning forward in her seat on the other side of the table to make her point.

"Only because I had the team. Because you all had my back. If it hadn't been for that...the guilt of killing Matt probably would have sent me over the edge sooner or later." The admission is sobering, but one that Jules--and the rest of Team One--had honestly known for years. It was part of why they'd unpacked Sam's bag when he'd almost quit SRU after losing Darren Kovacs at the Godwin Coliseum. They'd known or sensed that Sam was on the knife's edge and that they were the only ones who could keep him from falling off. So they'd taken everything that Sam had just packed out of the duffel bag and put it all back neatly into his locker while he'd been in the shower. When Sam had seen it, seen them...staying had been easier than packing up for a second time.

Knowing that they were beating a dead horse on this point of discussion, Greg moved things along. It became a fast volley exchange of thoughts.

"What do you think will happen to Kedrick?" asked Spike.

"A woman is dead, two men got shot, and other civilians and cops nearly got shot...that requires some kind of punishment,” said Ed.

"I can't argue with that,” admitted Jules. “I want to feel sorry for Kedrick, but at the same time, I don't. He had the choice to try and get help, to reach out, when he started having trouble returning to regular life. But he chose to push everyone away who would have tried to help him and seek comfort in the bottle and with strangers instead."

"But he was probably the macho type, Jules. I know them--hell, I _am_ one,” Sam shot back. “We don't like to admit weakness or ask for help. He probably couldn't do that, either--especially not to the people he'd led on that op. And especially not to Donna, if he was in love with her but she wasn't in love with him in return."

“But he didn’t mean for his old team to be targeted."

"Law of Unintended Consequences, Jules. Doesn't really matter what he meant to have happen, it's what did happen that counts. Okay, I can buy it that Kedrick didn't have a clue that the guy he was spilling his guts to in that bar worked for the crime family the task force had taken down. But he'd been in undercover work for years. That's not really much different from having military security clearances like I still do. If you're entrusted with secrets, then you keep them. You don't let disappointment--personal or professional or whatever--lead you into breaking the faith that your superiors and your unit or team mates have placed in you. Those guys on the task force had the right to expect that Kedrick would keep their names secret. Joe Comax had the right to believe that his wife--estranged or not--wouldn't be targeted and killed just because someone wanted to send a message. Pete didn't deserve to be shot just because he agreed to be best man at Hank’s wedding. Hank didn't deserve to be shot three times in the back just because he fell in love with Donna."

“Those are all good points, Sam,” the team’s sergeant spoke and the tenor of the room shifted downward. “Bill Kedrick made mistakes and he will be held accountable. Perhaps some of what he went through will be considered as mitigating circumstances, and perhaps none of it will. We don’t make the laws and we don’t adjudicate them—we just enforce them.”

In more than one mind: Greg's, Ed's, and Spike's--to say nothing of both Sam's and Jules'--the differences between today and the day when Jules had been shot by Petar Tomasic had been striking. Today, it had been Donna finding her new husband shot by her old partner; back then, it had been Sam actually _watching_ his secret girlfriend be shot by a subject sniper. Sam had done his job--shielding Jules, letting her be treated, taking a Scorpio shot not out of revenge for Jules but to save Ed's life, then going with SIU per protocol, and only after all duties were attended to had he gone to the hospital to be with Jules. Donna had chased after Kedrick blindly, pulled her gun on him, and threatened to shoot him like he'd done to Hank. No one would try to claim that the differences were due to Sam caring less for Jules than Donna did for Hank, or that Donna being a woman made her more emotional than Sam. All of them, except for Raf, had seen Sam's tears in the hospital room as he'd held Jules' hand and stroked her face and hair. Now, they each had the thought of wondering "what if" where the former couple was concerned--all but Greg, of course.

xxx

"Any plans for the weekend?" Spike asked the team at large as they headed for the locker rooms once the folder was closed on the day’s debrief.

"Solo camping trip," Sam replied. "Survival skills are getting a bit rusty."

"Just hanging out with the family," smiled Ed. "Sophie's been hinting about a honey-do list."

"Jules?"

"Home renovation projects. My door will be locked and my phone turned off. Just sayin'."

"Jam session with my bandmates--been too long since we've done that," Raf offered before Spike could ask him again directly.

"Boss?" When Greg just smiled, everyone stopped and looked at him, waiting.

Greg smiled broadly. "Dean's coming up for a visit. So I'll be doing whatever he wants to do."

"Sounds great," Ed clapped him on the shoulder. "Hey, if he wants to hang out with Clark for a bit, reconnect and whatever, just let me know, okay?"

"Sure, buddy. Thanks. I'll mention that to Dean."

xxxx

"You know, we could have done this in my backyard," Jules teased, as she leaned against the Jeep's bumper and watched Sam start to set up the tent.

"No, we couldn't," he denied.

"My yard is plenty big enough for a tent."

"But not big enough to keep the neighbors from hearing us," his retort shut down her teasing. She knew it was true. Neither one of them was known for being too quiet, and the smoldering look in his eyes promised Jules that she would be screaming a lot--and loudly--this weekend. _"Well, I won't be the only one,"_ she silently vowed.

After setting up the tent, he cleared ground-cover down to bare dirt and set up a ring of stones around their firepit. Jules spread their sleeping bags in a double layer inside the tent, shook out the light blankets, and fluffed up the small pillows they'd brought. Before she knew what was happening, she found herself flat on her stomach on the bedding, a solid weight anchoring her down. Her legs were pinned so that she couldn't even try to hook one around Sam's leg to throw him off her body. But really, she didn't even want to try. 

"Gonna make me scream?" she teased in a throaty purr.

In response, Sam bucked his hips against her backside, his hard and thick length amply proclaiming his intent to do precisely that. 

"Yeah, I am. You're gonna scare all the wildlife away."

"Back atcha, soldier," Jules had only enough freedom of movement to writhe under Sam, but that was more than effective enough for her purposes.

"So you're going to play it this way, my sexy sniper chick?"

"You got a problem with that?"

"Hell, no!" Sam lifted his body upward, allowing Jules to flip herself over onto her back then dropped back down. The full-body grinding contact had two pairs of eyes rolling from the sheer pleasure at being so close to each other, with no chance that anyone they knew could possibly catch them. By the time they both fell into sated sleep, all vows of vocalization and wildlife terrorism had been fulfilled multiple times. And in the privacy of their dreams, each dreamed of a day...a day in an unknown future...when this might be a real honeymoon for them.


	8. 4.17 Priority of Life

Greg Parker was walking down into the main lobby at SRU when his cell phone rang. Even though he didn't recognize the number he went ahead and answered.

"Greg Parker."

"Parker." The number might not have been familiar, but the voice unfortunately was only too well-known.

"Dr. Toth, hello," he greeted his caller in a pleasant voice, even though his feelings about the military psychologist were-like those of his entire team-far from favorable.

"How are you, Parker?" The obligatory greeting seemed rather perfunctory, even for a no-nonsense to-the-point man like Toth.

"Very well, thank you. How are you?"

"Displeased."

"Okay. You wanna tell me why?"

"Do you know what was contained in the call transcript for the seventeenth of last month?"

"Yes, I know what's in there."

"Really? For your sake, I hope not."

A frisson of concern began to work up Greg's spine. He covered his phone and gave the information to Ben, directing the dispatcher to display the transcript on the briefing room's monitor.

"Then you must be aware that Braddock and Callaghan broke department rules and violated the terms of the team's probation."

"No, that can't be right," Greg objected, instantly losing his good mood. Though his denial wasn't because he knew the charges weren't true--he knew they absolutely were--but rather because he couldn't imagine either Jules or Sam having been foolish enough to let their secret slip where Toth could have discovered it.

Toth said, "I'm on my way to SRU now-we'll talk when I get there."

After putting his phone away, Greg skimmed through the hot call transcript from the day when a former undercover cop's wife had been shot to death by a member of the Logan Family--the day Donna Sabine's new husband Hank had been wounded by her former partner only hours after they had exchanged their marriage vows. He read and reread the relevant section of the transcript, gazing in silence at the black-and-white proof that Sam and Jules had indeed slipped up and blown their secret for a second time.

**Callaghan: Hypothetically, you like the idea of a honeymoon?**

**Braddock: Hypothetically, I love it.**

**Callaghan: Please tell me it isn't daiquiris on a beach?**

**Braddock: Extreme hiking, remote trails, no bathrooms.**

**Callaghan: Sweet. Sign me up.**

**Braddock: Oh, you mean with you?**

"Damn it," Greg breathed out the imprecation.

"Greg, what's going on?" Ed asked, walking into the briefing room. The sergeant gestured toward the wall-mounted screen, where the hot call transcript was still displayed.

"They forgot to turn their mics off," he answered. Ed leaned forward to read the transcribed conversation that Greg had already memorized.

Greg could feel his friend and the team's tactical leader go very still. While on the surface, it might appear to merely be a natural topic of conversation given the day's events, to anyone-them or Dr. Toth especially-who knew Sam's and Jules' past, the exchange was so, so obviously much more than that. Both men wonder just how and when this started...again. It was something Greg had refused to ask outright when he'd caught them at Jules' house that morning a couple months ago, information he neither wanted nor needed, even if he did suspect the answer. But if they were talking about honeymoons--even just in theory--then what was between them was serious, and had to be the result of something long-term, something that clearly neither of them planned on ending this time.

"Jules and Sam? I thought they were done," Ed protested, clearly scrambling for a explanation other than the obvious.

"Well, they're not," it was as close as Greg was willing to come to saying that he suspected the couple had resumed their romantic relationship quite some time ago, almost in outright defiance of Toth.

"That was the condition when she rejoined the team."

"I know."

"Priority of Life." From the increasing heat in Ed's voice Greg knew that his friend and colleague was ramping up for quite the explosion.

"I got to tell you, Eddie, I knew it was happening."

"How long?"

"Two months." If Ed assumed that means how long the relationship has been going on this time, rather than merely how long Greg had known the truth and concealed it, so much the better. Even now, he was still trying to protect the others on the team. If anyone had to suffer the consequences for keeping silent--and there will be consequences, he was sure, especially with Toth coming here now--then Greg's responsibility as Sergeant was to make sure Ed was kept clean, so the team wouldn't lose both leaders. And he'd try to protect Sam and Jules, too. Sam's words the morning Greg had caught them rang loud in the sergeant's mind: _"Have you seen our performance slip?"_ No, he hadn't. No one had. Did that count for anything? _Shouldn't_ it count for something? "I made the choice to let it go on."

"What happened to 'no more secrets on the team'?"

"That way it's on me. It's not your job, it's mine."

"It's your job? What do you mean?" Ed asked in confusion.

"When Toth put this team on probation, I gave him my word that Sam and Jules wouldn't cross the line."

"Well, what's he going to do? Greg?"

The Sergeant didn't answer; couldn't. He knew that Toth coming to SRU wasn't going to be a good thing, not for him, not for Sam, and not for Jules. Toth had been very clear last year what the consequences would be if Jules and Sam resumed a romantic relationship: immediate suspension and disciplinary action for both of them, and for Greg as well. He'd told himself he was willing to accept the consequences if it came out, but now that the moment was at hand, Greg wasn't sure he was truly ready. Before he could think of what--if anything--to say to his friend of the past twenty years, the claxon alarm began to sound and Ben's voice carried through the intercom system.

"Team One, hot call. Gear up."

"Go," Greg told Ed.

"What do you mean?" asked Ed as he realized Greg wasn't going to be following him.

"I got no choice."

"Greg!"

"Go! Just go. I don't want the team distracted by this. Go."

* * *

The team raced to the hot call at a bio-engineering firm. Hearing just what kinds of nasty bugs they were about to encounter sent a chill through everyone on the team. They might have felt better with their Sergeant's voice in their earpieces, but he wasn't there. All Ed had told them was that "The Boss has something he needs to take care of here. We can handle this. Spike, with me. Sam and Jules. Raf, you're driving solo. Let's move, people."

Outside the lab, the team had only just started getting information from the company CFO when gunshots sounded from within the facility.

"Shots fired," Sam announced the obvious to the autoscriptor--the team knew that sound as well as he did. MP5 up and ready, Sam began to move toward the doors into the building, Ed and Raf following close behind, while Jules started herding RDA employees farther away from the threat. That done, she and Spike formed up with the rest of the team and they headed into a dark and powerless building to try and find any victims.

* * *

"What's going on, Ben?" Parker asked.

"Active shooter. No confirmed victims yet," the dispatcher replied.

"Just keep me informed, alright?" Team One's Sergeant--at least for this moment--requested, having just caught sight of Dr. Larry Toth entering the SRU lobby.

"Greg, I'm sorry to do this," the psychologist began.

"Do what?" Even though Greg had a fairly good idea, he needed to actually hear the words.

"I'm here to suspend you from duty." The older man actually did seem a bit regretful, but undeterred at the same time.

"Suspended," Greg spoke the word calmly after the two men had taken seats at the briefing room's conference table.

"I was expecting a bigger reaction," Toth replied.

"Conditionally? Permanently? What?" Greg wanted to know. A year ago the team had been cleared for duty-conditionally; with the terms of the detailed review of all call transcripts and incident documentation and the warning concerning Sam and Jules. Toth never seemed to want to make things easy, so most likely there would be strings attached to this suspension, too.

"That will depend on you." The psychologist's answer surprised the Sergeant. So did Toth's next statement. "Team One's probationary period is now over. But--" Toth sighed as he slapped a folder taken from his briefcase down onto the tabletop. "--I'm left with two major concerns. One is your judgment as Sergeant, regarding the relationship between Callaghan and Braddock, which you made the choice to conceal."

"That's right," Greg didn't bother trying to pretend otherwise. He'd trusted the couple to do their jobs to the utmost of their abilities, and they'd never once let him down.

"The other concern, equally critical to your team's safety, is your judgment of your own judgment. Second-guessing. Self-doubt. This is the subtext of all your reports, transcripts, self-evaluations. You openly question your own decision-making. How can you captain a ship, if you've lost your own compass? Any rebuttal? Or am I right that you are relieved that someone has finally made the choice for you?"

Greg looked at the man but said nothing.

"So," Toth slid a sheet of paper over to Greg. "Please sign here, and here, and I'll need you to relinquish your badge and sidearm."

Parker moved the pen closer to the page, but then stopped. "What about Braddock and Callaghan?"

"They will be reassigned to different teams."

Toth's answer is unexpected and unwelcome. Reassignment for both of them? And peremptory, without giving either officer the chance to make the choice to leave the team willingly to allow the other to stay. Greg slapped the pen down onto the table.

"That's not gonna work," the Sergeant stated. "If I had told them to end it, they would have. But I didn't. It's on me, not them."

"They made their own choice--" countered Toth, heat finally entering his voice. "--after already having been granted a second chance."

"Come on, doctor. Look me in the eye and tell me if you've ever, in all the calls we've had this year, seen their judgment or performance impaired by their relationship." Greg made it a statement rather than a question.

"Not yet," admitted the psychologist. "But it's only a matter of time before their instinct to protect each other overrides the safety of a citizen. This is why we have the Priority of Life protocol."

"You like assuming the worst, Larry?" Greg used the doctor's first name intentionally.

"Don't lecture me, Greg," he growled. "Imagining I could have kept someone safe, but didn't? _That's_ what keeps me up at night."

* * *

By the time Jules made it to the sealed laboratory chamber where the two scientists were working, the power in the building had just come back on. She didn't mind one bit the advice from the scientists that she stay outside the room until they were finished with their tasks. Microorganisms and other things too tiny to see gave her the heebie-jeebies. She wished the Boss was here to assure them all that things were stable and everything would be okay if they just did their jobs. Jules wondered just what he'd had to do at the station that was more important than being part of the hot call with his team. Maybe it was as innocuous as Ed had indicated, but there was a little niggle in her gut that said different.

"Guys, we need another twenty minutes in here," she reported in after the scientists, Applewhite and Logan, had told her what they needed to do to secure the samples of filoform.

"What's filoform?" Spike asked.

"It's a form of anthrax," the CFO, Rose Gilvery, reported.

 _"Anthrax? Great!"_ thought Jules sarcastically.

While Sam and Raf tried to determine where the gunman could have gone after bolting from the deep freeze room, Ed took the rescued security guard back to the command post to see if he could help them identify the gunman. The fact that the man knew the building was both good and bad, the TL decided. Good, because it meant he wasn't going to destroy things or hurt people in a willy-nilly fashion; bad, because he was in the lab for a very specific reason, which meant that the team was playing catch-up to try and stop him. It should have made Ed feel better to have a name for the subject, but hearing that Xavier Dodd had been let go partly due to mental health issues wasn't something he wanted to hear. Mentally-disturbed individuals were difficult to negotiate with and the team was a man down today-and that man was their best negotiator.

Jules jolted when a man in a protective suit--Xavier Dodd, without a doubt--burst into the clean room from a door on the other side from where she'd been watching. Seeing him point the gun he'd taken from the security guard at the two scientists sent Jules into the lab as well, her sidearm out and aimed at him. She didn't want to shoot a mentally-unbalanced person, but if he threatened the two doctors...Xavier had already gone active when he'd shot out the lab's generator, so policy would back her up if she had to shoot. And she might have to, Jules realized. The way Xavier kept waving the gun around, the fact that he didn't care that everyone in the room--including himself--were now inhaling anthrax spores... _"Not good...Boss, what would you do?"_

* * *

"Sir?" Ben had left the dispatcher's desk and was standing in the doorway to the briefing room. "Jules is in the line of fire. Subject has two hostages."

"What does he want?" Parker asked.

"No clear demands yet. He was fired for psychological reasons."

"Alright. I'll get a headset," Greg stood up and took a couple steps away from the table.

"Greg," Toth began, "we are going to the gun cage."

"No," Team One's Sergeant denied. "These are my people. I need to know what's going on."

As he handed Greg a communications headset, Ben added, "There's an exposed pathogen that could become airborne."

"What kind of pathogen?"

"Anthrax." The word would send a chill down the spine of anyone who heard it and Greg and Larry were no exceptions.

"Okay, forget the headset. Have Spike patch audio and visual into the briefing room. Do it now, right now."

"Don't make me call for an escort to take you off SRU property," Toth warned.

"Back off, Larry!" snapped Greg.

"You know you're officially under suspension."

As Greg hadn't actually signed the acknowledgment paperwork, he was tempted to dispute the point. "Then I have nothing left to lose, do I?" He turned away from Toth to look at the wall-mounted display that was now filled by a security camera view of the lab where Jules, Xavier, and the two scientists stood.

"If you do that, then you know your chances of returning to duty-"

"My team needs me." Greg's simple statement as he pointed to the screen silenced Toth's objections and he gave a small nod. This is what he wants to see: a confident and decisive man, who will make a choice and stand by it unappologetically.

Greg tapped a button on the tabletop comm unit. "Spike. Eddie. Can you hear me?"

"Boss." Ed blinked at the unexpected--but very welcome--voice.

"I've got comm and visual. I'm with you. Jules, you can do this."

Jules internally breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the Boss's voice and his confidence in her. "Xavier, can you tell me what you want here today?" She was as much worried by the erratic and angry man pacing on the other side of the lab as she was by the background information Spike fed her.

 _"A good employee, suddenly gone paranoid? Accusing the company of poisoning him?"_ Greg wasn't sure what it meant, yet. He set Ben to researching Xavier's life and himself called Spike to talk to Rose Gilvery. She told him that Xavier's symptoms were psychosomatic--all in his head--and that he'd blamed a mandatory vaccine for making him sick.

A thread of fear knotted itself in Jules' belly when Xavier demanded a sample of the vaccine he'd been given-the one he was sure caused whatever illness he thought he had-for his doctor to test, only to have Dr. Applewhite reply that there wasn't any of that batch left and thus nothing to test.

_"Xavier's unstable. Unwilling to accept reality. His plans are derailing, and now that he can't get what he wants, what will he do?"_

"Xavier doesn't have a lot to lose," Greg laid it out. "It's going to be hard working him down from this." But Jules did him proud, listening to Xavier talk about his condition--ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease--the lawsuit's purpose to provide for his family and his regrets that his little daughter would never remember the real him. "De-escalating. Nice job, Jules."

But it didn't last. Xavier shot right back up on the aggression meter when his personal doctor's examination of the company's records didn't produce the desired answer.

"Jules, I'm coming in," Sam said.

"Hang on. This is a lot for him to accept," she replied. With the Boss having left it to Jules to order him and Raf to move, Sam stayed put. He didn't like it, but he did it anyway. A minute later, he wished he hadn't. Xavier's yelling and gun-waving in Dr. Applewhite's face had drawn Jules closer in an effort to de-escalate things again. Sam's attention was focused on the gun, watching to see what the subject might do. Neither of them saw Dr. Logan, the female scientist, bend down and pull Xavier's other gun out of the satchel he'd set down on the floor until she had the weapon pointed at Xavier. A moment later, the gun went off and an explosion rocked the room.

"Jules. Jules. Jules! Jules, status!" Sam stared into the clean room in impotent fury. With the automatic lockdown triggered, there was now no way for either him or Raf to enter the lab to back her up. And Jules needed backup. Everyone in the room had been knocked to the the floor by the explosion. As they started stirring, Sam continued requesting a response from his girlfriend. "Jules, status. What's your status?"

"I'm okay," Jules' answer was quiet and not too convincing. She slowly sat up and moaned as blood began to spurt from a nicked artery in her left arm.

"Keep pressure on it," Sam commanded. "Ed, we got injured. I gotta get in there now."

"Easy, Sam, easy. We gotta know what we're dealing with here." The words aren't easy for Ed to say, not with what he'd learned that morning about the true nature of Sam's and Jules' relationship. Part of him feels like a hypocrite telling the younger man to calm down in the face of what they both see--especially when he himself wouldn't be able to follow his own advice.

"What the hell happened?" Parker demanded from the station. "Team?"

"Logan fired," Sam reported. "We got a major spill. The refrigeration unit broke open."

With that unwelcome news, the situation went from bad to worse. With the unit's contents scattered and broken on the floor, the pathogen meter's display had jumped from 200 to 900 in a matter of seconds and was still climbing. And from worse to worst: the environmental controls that would normally have cleansed the air weren't working thanks to Xavier's earlier sabotage of the power system.

 _"Jules!"_ Sam silently screamed her name, while outwardly showing nothing of his terror and anguish. Aloud, he said, "Ed, we've got to go in. I'm suiting up now." Even if Raf was now on his way to the vent room to try and fix the sabotaged controls, there was no way that Sam could stay outside that room as a spectator. Not with the spore count up to almost half of the lethal exposure level, or with Logan trapped under the knocked-over refrigeration unit.

As he suited up, Sam saw Xavier remarkably help Applewhite move the overturned unit and reset Logan's broken leg, after he'd kicked Jules' gun away from her--not that she was in any condition to use it right now.

"Jules, can you hear me?" Sam adjusted his earpiece. She nodded. "Sniper breathing. Okay? Slow it down and hold. Lower your heart rate; you'll lose less blood. We're coming right in. We'll get you out soon, okay?"

Ed's gut and fists clenched in helpless fury at Xavier's insistence that no one would leave the room until he got his answer. _"What does the idiot think? That he can just wave a magic wand and get a different result than before? Is he so detached from reality, from facing his own inevitable death, that he doesn't care if he takes three other innocent people with him?_ Personally, Ed didn't care what happened to Logan and was indifferent to Applewhite--though, of course, as a police officer he'd do everything possible to save them both. But he did care personally and professionally about Jules and she needed to be out of there just as much as the others did.

Spike and Ed both racked their brains trying to figure out what explanations there might be for this situation. Ed's mind flashed back to the roster of former employees and Rose's story about the safety operations department head taking his entire team with him to a new job. _"Could Xavier be right? Could there really have been a cover-up? A buy-off?_

Even across the miles that separated him from his team, Greg was on the same wavelength. _"If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably not a cat,"_ he thought. And he knew just how to prove it.

Jules couldn't help the soft whimper that escaped her tense lips when the alarm and flashing light trumpeted the rapidly-approaching fatal exposure threshold.

"Jules, slow your breath, okay? Count it out. Keep your heart rate real slow," Sam spoke with a calmness that he didn't feel, not with how ragged her breathing had become.

"Jules? Jules! Jules! Jules!" Sam's voice went from questioning to concerned as, within the clean room, Jules slumped back down to the floor. For some reason that, rather than anything she'd said, was what seemed to evoke a measure of concern from Xavier. While Dr. Applewhite tried to keep Jules calm and to control the bleeding, Sam stepped into a negotiation that he absolutely did not feel qualified to run, urging Xavier yet again to let the innocents in the room get out while there was still time. "Xavier, how can this possibly help you?"

Somehow, miraculously, the dying man listened that time and agreed to let Logan leave.

"Jules, I'm on my way," Sam turned to head for the airlock chamber. Despite the obvious emotion driving the words, Sam's tone still managed to be calm and nearly professional.

"Are you hearing what I'm hearing? Civilians are at risk!" Toth spoke for the first time in a while. He had been remarkably unobtrusive as Greg worked this call at a distance--until now.

"He knows what he's doing," Greg stated with confidence. He knew--he _knew_ \--that Sam would always do the right thing. It was just the essential core to the remarkable young man thrust upon Team One years ago.

Everyone, whether inside the clean room, outside it, or sitting miles away in SRU's headquarters, watched the scene that played out in stark whiteness on security monitors and TV screens, each of them silent and still. Sam Braddock, completely covered in a white protective bio-suit, walked across the lab floor from the airlock door to where Dr. Applewhite had braced the wounded scientist in a semi-sitting position against his body. Sam passed directly in front of his own wounded teammate and girlfriend, and while his head did turn to look at her-and Jules' head lifted to gaze back at him-his strides did not falter and his feet did not deviate from the path. Sam reached the injured woman, slid his arms under her shoulders and knees, and stood up with the other scientist's help. Then he turned and retraced his steps back to the exit and the decontamination chamber, head again rotating slightly to check on Jules. Every single man had the exact same thought: " _I couldn't do that. There is no way I could ever do that."_

As the decontamination process sent plumes of white mist swirling, Sam faced back into the lab. From where she lay on the floor, surrounded by her own blood, Jules looked back at him. They offered no words and didn't need any. Their eyes did all the talking necessary.

_"I love you. I'm sorry. I had to save Logan first. I didn't want to, Jules, but I had to."_

_"I know, Sam. It's okay. You followed the rules, just like you were supposed to, just like we promised each other and the Boss that we always would. I love you, too."_

"Did you see that?" Parker asked the psychologist. A rhetorical question, since the man was sitting next to Greg, looking at the same TV screen on the wall. "You might want to write that down, put it in your file. Priority of Life is observed."

"Noted," Toth's answer was a single word. He had to know exactly what Greg did at this moment. Even in the direst and most life-threatening situations, both Sam and Jules could keep to the rules and do the right thing. Not the easy thing--hell, no, that couldn't have been easy at all--but the right thing. If it had been Greg in Sam's place and Dean or Marina in Jules' position...Greg knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he couldn't have possibly had the mental and emotional strength that Sam just displayed, to walk past his grievously wounded loved one to save the injured civilian who was directly responsible for that loved one's current condition. But Sam had done exactly that. Just like years earlier when he'd let Jules leave in the ambulance, grabbed his rifle, and soon after taken the Scorpio shot that had saved Ed's life by ending that of Petar Tomasic, Sam had done his job perfectly here. Maybe not a single other person in the world could have done any of that, but Sam clearly could, and just has. Not that the sniper wouldn't feel guilty about this for a long time-perhaps always. As Greg had said more than once to his team: "Just because we do right, doesn't mean we get to feel right." Sam did right today, but surely won't feel good about it, especially if--no! _"I won't go there_ ", Greg vowed. They would get Jules out in time, or Raf would get the environmental controls system reset, before the lethal exposure threshold was reached. The anthrax exposure would be treated, the shrapnel wound tended to, and Jules--the daughter of his heart and love of Sam's life--would be okay.

"Hey, Sarge, is that you?" Jules gasps the words.

"Hey, Jules, you stay with me," Parker lifted up the comm device, as it speaking into it directly might bring him closer to her. "You hang in there, okay?"

"I couldn't get through to him," she apologized for what she saw as a failure. In his seat, Toth was rendered immobile. This woman is so close to either bleeding to death or succumbing to anthrax exposure, and she's apologizing for failing her boss?

And Larry Toth also realized--he did, _finally_ , understand--that neither Samuel Braddock nor Julianna Callaghan fit any typical mold. He hadn't understood--certainly hadn't believed--that they could really go back to just being teammates and friends after having been lovers, yet they had done it. Looking objectively at the years of hot call transcripts that he'd examined over the past 12 months, Toth was aware that there was nothing in any of them that would have been exclusively indicative of a romantic relationship between the pair. Oh, yes, Braddock had repeatedly expressed concern for threats that subjects had posed to Callaghan's safety or risks she'd taken to protect hostages or civilians--but he did that for everyone on the team, not just her. The words he'd spoken to Greg Parker earlier now revealed themselves to be wisps of fog that evaporated under the light of the sun. Put into the crucible today, Braddock had proven just how refined an instrument he truly was. Larry had watched as the ex-military sniper had walked across the clean room, right past his wounded girlfriend, and instead carried the wounded female scientist to safety. No tears, no obvious emotion, no hesitations. Absolute and complete professionalism.

* * *

"Thank you for your honesty, Rose," Dr. Bergan, RDA's CEO ended the call with his CFO and delivered sober glances to both Parker and Toth that expressed his total and heartfelt dismay at what had happened under his less than thorough supervision.

Those sitting in the SRU conference room heard Ed Lane's voice through the tabletop comm unit speak the exact same words moments later, but with a very different delivery. The CEO's voice had been regretful, the sorrow of a man realizing that someone he has trusted just proved themselves to be unworthy of it. The TL's tone had been the tight-leashed anger of a man who could do precious little to try and protect a subordinate who was in mortal danger because ~~of~~ a greedy woman who viewed the lives of countless innocent patients as a small price to pay in her quest for a company profit and a year-end personal bonus.

Ed marched to the clean room, hoping and praying that Jules would be able to convince Xavier of the truth in time to save their lives. And thanks to the phenomenal negotiator that she has become, his prayers are answered. In an amazing display of courage, Xavier lets his two hostages leave, knowing that the decontamination chamber may not work fast enough to bring him out next.

"Be ready. She's lost a lot of blood," Sam alerted the paramedics who were waiting just a short distance down the hallway. As soon as the door opened, Sam helped Dr. Applewhite guide Jules out of the chamber and onto the nearby gurney.

"Come on, Jules. Come on." Ed spoke emphatically, urging her to keep fighting.

"We're going to give you an IV and then get you to the hospital," one paramedic told Jules as he handed Sam an oxygen mask to place over her nose and mouth.

"I love you. You're gonna be okay, Jules." Even though Sam had muted and removed his headset before speaking, Jules' comm unit was still in place and on, so everyone linked in still heard the quiet avowal that Sam spoke to her as the paramedics worked to save her life. Jules didn't--likely couldn't--respond verbally, and Sam's body was between the gurney and the security cameras, so any unspoken answer Jules might have managed was just between her and Sam. What the remote watchers _did_ see was the look that Ed--and Spike and Raf, too, for that matter--directed at the nearby camera. Ed's laser blue gaze easily pierced the distance with its intensity. _Look at this. Look at them!_ he silently demanded.

"Okay, we've got her stabilized for the moment. Let's get her to the hospital," one of the paramedics announced.

"Alright, team. Unis have Xavier and Rose in custody. Spike, Raf, go get the equipment in the command center packed up. Sam, you take one of the SUVs and follow the ambulance to the hospital. Jules shouldn't be alone right now. I'll give the scene a once-over before handing things off, and we'll all meet at the hospital to check on Jules, okay?" Ed met Sam's eyes squarely and gave a small nod.

"Copy that," Sam breathed out the acknowledgement. He stepped away to allow the gurney to be turned and moved down the hallway, then moved back close to it and took hold of the hand on Jules' uninjured side. Even though they all had things to do right now, all three members of the team who were present stayed to watch the gurney as it was wheeled away. For Ed and Spike, the moment felt like deja vu. A couple years earlier, they'd watched an almost identical scene: Jules shot on the rooftop, Sam walking with her all the way to the ambulance, letting go only when he didn't have the choice not to. It had been the first thing to clue the team into the fact that Sam and Jules were secretly dating at the time. Now this repeat stands as an affirmation of the depths of the feelings that those two clearly have for each other, always have, and clearly always will.

"Did you know...?" Raf asked Spike as they walked back to the command center and started taking Spike's setup apart.

The techie sighed, considering what to say to their newest teammate. Then he overtly turned off his comm unit and gestured for Raf to do the same. "We figured out they were dating in secret when Jules got shot a couple years ago. But they broke up when Jules came back to the team after she recovered. I didn't pick up on them getting back together, but...I don't know. I guess it doesn't really bother me."

"But it's against the rules."

"Technically, yeah, it is. I don't know how long it's been going on this time, but _I_ certainly haven't seen it causing any problems. There are rules, yeah, but black-and-white rules don't always make practical sense in the real grayscale world we live in. I mean, you can't really help who you fall in love with. And to be punished for doing something that everyone else in the world can do with no problems...is that right? I don't think so."

Raf picked up another piece of equipment and considered what Spike just said. He could see the other man's point. Married police officers didn't face--at least in any official sense--scrutiny over whether their relationships impacted their ability to work professionally; neither did single officers who dated civilians. It seemed obvious that Sam and Jules had faced the firing squad simply because they happened to fall in love with someone they worked with. Raf suddenly remembered his first day in SRU, when he'd invited the available members of the team to the club where he and his band had a Valentine's Day performance booked. How closely Sam and Jules had been sitting to each other in the booth. The way their gazes had met and held. He now wonders if being an outsider at the time might have helped him pick up on what the existing members of the team didn't see: that the connection between Sam Braddock and Julianna Callaghan went beyond that of mere teammates. He thinks back over the months since then. Like Spike, he can't recall a time when either one of them has let their personal life interfere with their job. Raf generally prefers the certainty of those black-and-white rules Spike mentioned, but...can he really blame Jules and Sam for choosing to grab hold of happiness when it appeared in front of them, rather than being self-sacrificial just to follow a rule?

Spike was silently grateful when Raf chose not to ask any more questions. He needed the time to think. And there was certainly plenty to consider. How could he not have realized that his two best friends have been secretly dating each other for who knew how long? Was he that unobservant? _No, I'm not_ , Spike realized. _Just preoccupied. Pa dying_ , _Ma moving back to Italy, me being on my own for the first time..._ So, really it wasn't a huge surprise that he didn't figure it out, he decided. So that left him to figure out how he (would) feels about it. Will he mean the stuff he said to Raf just a few minutes ago? Does it make a difference to him if two of his teammates are dating? Has it hurt anyone? Does it really matter that they've broken a rule? No, it doesn't--none of it. They deserve to be happy, and he's going to be happy for them.

Alone in the SUV, heading to the hospital with Raf and Spike in the vehicle behind him, Ed takes time to think. It was probably good that this hot call had been such an intense one--if only from the standpoint that being so focused on the biological hazards and the civilians and team members who were thus at risk has kept Ed from having any time to explode at Sam--or Jules, too--but more likely Sam, over this second secret relationship. Ed was man enough to admit that he and Greg hadn't handled things the right way the first time. Insisting that Sam go out with them for drinks only a day after he was dumped by Jules? Justifying his callous reaction to the emotional pain he'd seen in the eyes of the normally stoic sniper by saying that he'd never seen the pair as a real couple? Laying the blame for the relationship's existence solely on Sam, and not giving Jules any of the same criticism? None of that had been right. With the rocky patch in his own marriage being in the not-too distant past, what justification did Ed have to pass judgment on anyone else's relationship? Okay, so Sam and Jules were an item again. If he thought about it, Ed realized that it might not be all that big of a deal. Lack of time had kept him from pressing the issue with Greg that morning, but Ed will color himself highly surprised if this has only been going on for a couple of months, the way Greg implied. Not with Jules and Sam talking about honeymoons. Ed couldn't think of any time in at least past year, if not even longer, when either party had been anything other than professional. Will he ask how long they've been back together? Can he react calmly if the answer isn't one he likes? What will he do about this? Accept it? Try to split them up again? The fact that this is a renewed relationship strongly suggests that being apart isn't an option for either Sam or Jules. Will he support them staying on the same team, since they've proven they can handle it? Or will he follow the rules and force one of them to leave?

When they arrived at the hospital, they didn't see Sam anywhere in the waiting room, so Ed went to the information desk to get details.

"I'm Ed Lane with SRU. One of my officers, Julianna Callaghan, was brought in a little while ago. Another of my officers, Sam Braddock, was with her. Where are they?"

"Officer Callaghan is being treated in room four. That way," the nurse pointed. "Officer Braddock is with her."

Approaching the room, Ed and Spike again got that feeling of deja vu. Sam was beside Jules' bed, just like he had been years before, only sitting this time. Sam's body canted forward and he was holding Jules' hand again, brushing fingers along her cheek just outside the coverage of an oxygen mask. A bag hanging from an IV stand was dripping something into the IV line running into Jules' other arm.

The trio stood in the doorway for a minute deliberating what to do. Jules looked to be a bit foggy at that moment, but none of them could imagine that Sam wasn't aware of their presence. However, his eyes remained fixed on Jules. His shoulders relaxed slightly when her eyes opened to meet his.

"You guys might as well come in," Sam said without looking at them.

Ed approached the bed first. "How are you doing?" he asked Jules.

"Okay," the word is more whispered than spoken.

Sam lifted a finger to his lips in a warning for Jules not to talk. "She got decontaminated just as a precaution. Weapons will be okay, but she'll need a new uniform and vest just to be on the safe side. Doctor stitched up the laceration in her arm. It was fairly deep, so it took a quite a few, but he said Jules will be just fine. Stitches may come out by the end of the week. They gave her Diphenhydramine as a pre-treatment and just started the regimen of Raxibacumab. They want to monitor her at least through tomorrow and do some follow-up checks before even talking about discharge, but they feel confident that the lethal exposure threshold wasn't reached and that these treatments are just precautionary."

"That's good news," Ed expressed his relief, which Raf and Spike echoed. After a few moments of silence, the Team Leader decided that ignoring the elephant in the room was pointless.

"So, a couple months, huh?" An eyebrow lifts as Ed posed the rhetorical question.

"What?" Sam looked up in confusion.

"This," Ed gestured between the two. "This morning, Greg said it's been going on for two months."

"He's known for two months. How long he suspected before that..." a heavy sigh from the blond sniper. "Maybe from the very start. I don't know. He didn't say and we didn't ask."

"So when was the beginning?" Spike interrupted.

A glance passed between Sam and Jules.

"The day we all got grilled by Toth."

Even though he'd been sure the relationship had some length to it, Ed found himself still a bit surprised to be told it had been an entire year now.

"It's not like we did this to spite him," Sam began to explain. "We aren't childish. But it is at least in part _because_ of Toth. Those interviews...he made us both face up to things we'd been trying--and somewhat succeeding--to ignore ever since we broke up: that the feelings we had for each other were still there. Always had been and always would be. Once we realized that..."

"Getting back together was inevitable," Jules' completion of Sam's sentence could be heard even through her oxygen mask.

"We hated lying to everyone again, but..." Sam shrugged one shoulder. He didn't finish the sentence, but it was clear to the team all the same: Sam and Jules hadn't liked lying but they hadn't had a choice about it--at least, not one they could live with.

"How did Greg find out?"

"He showed up at Jules' place before shift one day to tell her about the Law Enforcement Professional of the Year award she'd been chosen for. And I just trot down the stairs half-dressed, all easy-breezy, asking Jules what she wanted for breakfast...talk about getting busted. But he didn't have much time to dress us down over it before we got upped early to take that gun call at McClendon Park--Martin Terran, remember? Boss said we'd pick the lecture up again later, but by the end of the day...I guess he decided not to do anything about it; just told us he had faith we could do the job right in spite of our relationship." Sam paused and then his entire body tensed up as the precise topic of discussion and who he was having it with belatedly registered. "How? How do _you_ know?"

"You two busted yourselves a month ago, but I guess it didn't actually hit anyone's radar until today. Talking honeymoon ideas on the job? Really?" Ed raised an eyebrow.

Sam and Jules were both motionless for long seconds. Then Sam breathed out, "Oh, shit."

"Yeah. Toth just found out. He showed up at HQ today right when we got the call. That's why the Boss didn't come."

Behind her oxygen mask, Jules' face was horrified. "What happened?" she mouthed more than gasped the question.

"I don't know," Ed admitted. "But I'm going to guess Toth didn't stop by to say 'congratulations'."

Sam let go of Jules' hand, lifting both of his to run through his cropped blond hair in a very Greg-like gesture. "He could lose his job," the sniper muttered.

"What?" Raf asked the question.

Sam's head lifted and his blue eyes met Raf's brown ones. "When the team got put on probation a year ago, Sarge got a very specific warning about us--" he flicked a hand between himself and Jules. "If we crossed the line again with a personal relationship, we'd both be suspended and disciplined...and so would Sarge, if he knew about it. He should have reported us when he found out, but he didn't. He let it slide. Trusted us not to make a mistake." He snorted bitterly. "And what do we do? Talk about honeymoon ideas right after a call, with our mics still on and the auto-scriptor recording! How could we be that stupid? Risking _our_ careers was one thing--risking the Boss's?"

"Sam," Jules whispered his name. They locked eyes, and to their watching teammates, it was clear that a silent conversation was taking place. Both faces lacked the masks they'd obviously been wearing to conceal their truth, and it's a powerful revelation to their teammates of just how strong their connection is. For Spike and Raf, there is the hope that such a relationship awaits them sometime in the future. Ed knows that he already has it with Sophie, and how crucial and sustaining their relationship is for him to be able to do this job for as long as he has.

"Don't give up on this," Ed found himself advising. "If this--" he gestured between them again "--is what you want, then fight for it. _I'll_ fight for it."

Two heads snapped around to lock onto him.

"I almost lost my wife and my kids because I kept putting the job in front of them. The job _is_ important to me, but so are Sophie, Clark, and Izzy. I could have ended up alone if I hadn't reevaluated my priorities. I don't want either of you being alone for the rest of your lives because of this job. I don't like it that you were lying to us by omission when you were keeping this a secret, but I get why you did it. I'm sure Greg did, too, and that's why he kept this secret for you. You're good at your jobs; both of you are so damned good at what you do. This team doesn't deserve to lose either of you because of a rule designed by a paper-pusher."

All four of the ambulatory team members left the hospital and went back to SRU. Jules insisted that Sam go, too; to wrap up his work day, get their stuff, and try--if possible--to keep their decisions from blowing back onto the Boss.

"I love you, Sam," Jules lifted her oxygen mask long enough to speak those four simple--yet powerful--words.

"Nowhere else I'd rather be," Sam offered the phrase that most on the team had spoken at one time or another. Spike suddenly recalled the sniper saying those exact words a year ago, when--after Dr. Toth tried to forbid Sam and Jules from doing the double-drop to take down Colin Potter--the Boss had given each team member the opportunity to stand down.

* * *

Greg and Dr. Toth were sitting at the table, piles of papers and other call-related gear scattered over the surface.

"I confronted you with your suspension. You agreed to it. But when you saw your people out there were at risk, what'd you do?" Toth waved one hand in the air. "You went high-noon on me--at great risk to your chances of getting your job back. Now why is that?"

Ed had moved faster than the rest of his team and reached SRU and the briefing room in time to hear Toth speaking.

"You saw what happened out there," Ed didn't make his words anything other than an emphatic statement as he sat down next to the psychologist. "Priority of Life was observed."

"Today it was. We don't know about tomorrow," Toth dismissed.

 _"Well, hell,"_ Ed thought _. "No one knows about tomorrow. Nothing is guaranteed for anyone. "_

"Oh, you gotta be kidding me." Ed had looked down to see a document of suspension sitting on the table in front of Toth.

"Your Sergeant's suspension orders," Toth confirmed.

"You just don't get it, do you?"

"I've seen this team. I've read the reports."

"You don't see what this team does. You don't live the job. If it wasn't for him--" Ed pointed to Greg.

"Eddie," Greg tried to warn his friend off from career suicide.

"Sam and Jules? That was the right call."

"You can't say that," Greg shook his head.

Ed slapped the table in emphasis. "It was the right call because it was _your_ call. And that's why we're here. That's why we're Team One. So don't come in here and tell me otherwise."

Sam, Spike and Raf walked into the room now, though Sam stopped short. There haven't been too many people in his life that he has ever hated, but he'd seen two of them today: that damned scientist Logan, who'd gotten Jules hurt, and now this sadistic psychologist Toth again. For one mad moment, Sam wanted to offer the man some sort of prize as a thank you for helping him and Jules get back together a year ago. But sanity keeps a firm grip on his tongue and he said nothing.

"See, here's the thing. I like this team. I like your Sergeant. I trust him. The problem is: he doesn't trust himself. Team One is off of probation as of today. Regarding Callaghan and Braddock-" Toth turned to face Sam directly.

Sam met the psychologist's gaze with a blank stare of his own.

"Based on what I've seen today, I will make a personal appeal to the chief to reverse his decision to split them up. Until that time, they will remain on Team One." Toth had swung away from Sam to face Greg as he spoke that last part.

Sam's gaze flicked around the room, trying to absorb this. He and Jules were going to be split up--professionally? And now Toth-- _Toth?_ -was going to go to bat for them? What kind of twilight zone was this?

"Thank you," Greg smiled.

"How is she?" Toth directed the question to Sam. The sniper wore a professional mask and didn't tear into the psychologist the way he honestly wanted to. Career-preservation, perhaps, or maybe registering a measure of sincere concern in the older man's voice.

"She's stable, Sir. She'll be alright," Sam replied.

"I'm glad to hear it," and Toth appeared to mean it.

"Sergeant Parker, you have some thinking to do. I'm going to give you one week to decide if you want to continue to lead this team. Your team trusts your judgment. So do I. One week." Toth walked out of the room and every single person hoped it's for the last time, that they'd never see the man again.

"We'll debrief tomorrow," Ed made the executive decision after Greg walked out of the room after refusing to tear up the suspension papers on the spot. "Sam, you make sure to take care of yourself so that you can take care of Jules, okay? Let us know how she's doing when you come in tomorrow--and if you need anything tonight, just give one of us a call, you hear me?"

"Copy that."

* * *

As soon as Ed got home, Sophie could see that he was worked up about something. It wasn't the same as when he'd had to take a lethal shot--she knew only too well what that looked like on her husband. No, this was different. He was more frustrated or angry or something like that; not withdrawn and despondent. She quietly asked Clark to keep an eye on Izzy, and as she headed for the master bedroom after Ed, she heard Clark start to play the child-friendly songs that had been some of the earliest cello pieces he'd learned.

"What's wrong? Was it a bad call?"

"Yes, but not like _that_. Everyone walked away today. Well, Jules didn't--she was wheeled away. But she's going to be fine."

"What happened?" Sophie gently pushed Ed down to sit on the bed and sat next to him, hoping that he'd share with her what was bothering him. She listened in silence as he spoke about everything that had happened that day.

"Are you angry?" she asked when he'd finished.

"Angry? Why would I be angry?"

"Eddie..." his wife chided gently. "Three members of your team--three of your friends--lied to you by omission for months. They didn't trust you with this secret. I know you, darling. You're angry--or at least upset."

"I was," he admitted. "But then I watched them, I listened... You know, when Greg and I broke them up the first time they dated, I told him that I didn't see Sam and Jules as a couple--like my impressions were what mattered most. But today...Soph...there is no way I could have done what Sam did today. I look back at all the stuff they've done this year...they got through all of it because they had each other to lean on. I was wrong about them, Sophie."

* * *

Greg lay sleepless in his bed that night. He would have thought that having the team's probation ended would ensure a good night's sleep, but that didn't seem to be in the cards. Too many thoughts whirled around inside his head for sleep to come easily, or maybe at all. The past few years had been some of the toughest he'd ever known, at least since the days of having his wife and son ripped away and his hard climb out of the bottle. Dean's sudden reappearance in his life had been an un-looked for blessing, just like the relationship with Marina was proving to be. But he still couldn't help feeling that he didn't deserve either of them, that one day he'd fail one or both of them in some spectacular fashion. And there was the lingering aftermath of his best friend of several decades having been seriously wounded as a result of the decision he'd made to bring in an outsider to do the team's psychological evaluations last year. Why had he done that? When and why had he started questioning his own judgment as the leader of the team?

If there was a single smoking gun, it might have been the night of the spree shooting at the museum and the brutal SIU sessions that the entire team had endured from Agent Jill Hastings afterward.

 _"She's gunning for you,"_ Ed had said to him that night. And she had been, Greg knew. It had been easier for her to blame Greg--Brian's SRU Team Leader--than to admit that an officer she'd personally trained with an eye to joining SRU hadn't been able to do the job when it had counted and had lost his life as a result. It had, he now judged, planted a seed of doubt in his mind that maybe Greg Parker wasn't really as good at the job as everyone thought he was.

Jill had been targeting him...had Larry Toth been targeting Team One?

 _"Military psychologist. He breaks up teams."_ That had been Sam's observation the day of the requals. And it might hit the nail square on the head. Just like Jill had been laser-focused in her post-spree interviews to find some action or inaction of Greg's to prove he was at fault, so too had Larry gone after each team member's vulnerabilities with a machete, deliberately creating the very stress responses that he used to justify hammering them even more over.

 _"Is this why the probation lasted a full year?"_ Greg now wondered. Toth had left them completely alone until today, to the point when they'd all basically forgotten that each call transcript was being sent to the psychologist's office for detailed review. An entire year of hot calls, yet Toth hadn't contacted them until today. Why? Logically it was because he'd had no reason to, nothing at all to point to as a justification to remove even a single member from the team. Not until he'd read the recorded conversation between Sam and Jules and immediately high-tailed it to SRU to throw down the punishments--apparently calling the Commander and Chief on the way. Why had Toth been focused so heavily on the two of them, almost from the start? Okay, yes, Spike, Wordy, and Ed had all gotten reamed, too, but not even close to the extent that the former couple had received. Why hadn't Toth followed up on Ed's marital status and work/family balance? Why hadn't he asked about Spike's commitment to the team, both before and after his father's death from cancer? Why hadn't Toth requested Wordy's new health assessment-where he would have learned of the Parkinson's diagnosis months before Ed's overreaction forced Wordy to resign from SRU? Why hadn't any or all of those red-flag issues Toth had identified sparked even one single warning like the one he'd delivered to Greg about Jules and Sam and any future renewed relationship?

Recognizing that the few hours of restless sleep he'd gotten after first going to bed would be all he'd get tonight, Greg finally got up and quietly headed into the kitchen to turn on the coffee pot. While the pot brewed and after he'd poured and begun drinking, he continued his reflections.

Sam and Jules. What, exactly, about that honeymoon conversation had been so damning that it caused Toth's certainty about a resumed romantic attachment between them? Even though he'd thought while reading the transcript that the exchange was obvious in its implications, he isn't so sure about that now. Sam and Jules were both—officially--single and had just wrapped up a call where a colleague's wedding had been interrupted by gunfire and her new husband being shot. Was it really so unbelievable that they might afterwards talk about their own thoughts concerning marriage and dream honeymoons? Had it just been the fact that it was Sam and Jules having that conversation that had provoked the relationship assumption? What if it had been Jules and Spike? Jules and Raf? Sam and former teammate Leah?

"Dad?"

Greg started in surprise.

"Dean? Son, are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Are you?" Dean shuffled into the kitchen and poured his own cup of coffee, for which he got a look from his father. "What? You drink it. And I'm as tall as you are, so no need for any growth-stunting comments."

Greg-who had in fact been able to say precisely that-chose to salute his son with his cup instead. Much as he appreciated watching Jules' growing skill in profiling and negotiating, he was now experiencing the same thing with his seventeen-year-old son. Dean was proving to have quite an insightful personality and intellect. That made Greg regret yet again the decade of their estrangement and at the same time rejoice in their reunion now. Rejoice--and yet watch for a falling sandbag. There was a part of him that, logically or not, couldn't help feeling that he didn't deserve this. That somehow he was going to screw up this second chance just like he had the first. Joanne and Dean, Marina and Dean...

"Dad?"

"Sorry. Yeah, I'm fine. Just a rough day yesterday, Jules getting hurt and all."

"But she's going to be okay, right?"

"She will. I'm fine, Dean-O, really. Just tired. Hard to settle down last night. Any plans today?"

* * *

"What happened with Toth?" Jules asked. Her voice--much stronger now than it had been earlier--woke Sam from his light sleep.

The sniper sat upright in the padded hospital chair and stretched to loosen the kinks in his muscles. "He decided he was wrong about us. Thinks we can handle dating and being on the same team so he's going to appeal to the Chief and Commander to reverse their decision to make one of us move to a different team. The Boss got suspended for covering for us and has a week to decide if he'll accept the suspension--and the likely end of his career in SRU--or stay and keep leading the team. Debrief got pushed to today, so I'll need to be there by 9 AM."

"Hold me," she requested. Sam helped her shift over on the bed and slid in behind her to lay his arm over her waist. So much was still unknown for both them and for the Boss, but in the here-and-now of the moment, together, life was good.

* * *

AN: Thanks to Venetiaj for the review asking why the honeymoon talk would have been enough to bring Toth back breathing condemnation. I think I remembered most of what I said in my review reply and put it in Greg's head here, as I'm sure he would have started his week of thinking almost immediately.

The next chapter will be the final one for this story. Thanks for coming along on this journey with me and stay tuned for what I might have coming up next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved exploring how everyone not-Greg now react to finally learning that Sam and Jules are back together. Hope you enjoy. Let me know what you think.


	9. 4.18 Slow Burn

Time ticked down to the scheduled end of their last shift of the week as most of Team One headed for the dispatcher's desk. It had been quite a stressful week for all of them. The hot call at the biolab, Jules' recovery from her anthrax exposure and shrapnel wound, the waiting game for Jules and Sam to hear the outcome of their appeal to remain on Team One together despite their now-revealed romantic relationship, and the pending decision from Sarge regarding his suspension... This picnic was going to be a welcome break for everyone--if they could finish their shift without another hot call coming in.

"Nice job, Team One!" Winnie greeted the group. 

“Winnie, time check?" Spike responded cheerfully.

"One hour till the end of shift."

A spirited exchange confirming who was bringing what to the picnic came to a screeching halt when Sarge didn't respond to Winnie's query.

"Help me in the gun cage. Come on," Ed nudged Greg in the direction of the weapons storage locker.

Once they'd left hearing range, Jules hesitantly asked, "He's coming, right?"

"Yeah. He's supposed to get the call from the Chief at 7:30," Winnie answered.

"He better be coming," said Spike resolutely. The thought that the boss might not be there dampened some of his enthusiasm at bringing the last two bottles of the homemade red wine he and his dad had made prior to the elder Scarlatti's death last year. He would've liked to bring some of the batch that Ed, Sam, and Raf helped him make a few months ago, but it hadn't aged long enough to be drinkable yet and would have to wait for tasting until next year's picnic. After all, he didn't want to poison his teammates; that would not be something any of them would want to experience or remember, unlike the wine-making itself.

"Thanks.” Jules said, accepting the bottle of water Sam handed her. “I guess that was our last call for Team One as we know it."

"We don't know that," her teammate and now-acknowledged boyfriend denied, though without much in the way of conviction.

"Yes, we do. The Chief already made his decision."

"And Dr. Toth is making a personal appeal to overturn it," Sam reminded her.

“It’s the Chief we’re talking about.” She didn’t seem optimistic that a reversal of the decision was likely.

"Yeah, well, not long now," Sam sighed and checked his watch. Not long until they'd find out if their lives would be able continue on the current path or if instead their worst fears would be realized. Dr. Toth had contacted Commander Holleran and the Police Chief to report their renewed secret relationship even before he arrived at SRU a week ago to confront the team's sergeant. The promised disciplinary consequence slating both Jules and himself for reassignment to other teams had been decreed, though it had almost immediately been amended to only one of them leaving Team One. Thankfully, enactment of that punishment was tabled during the appeal process. The Chief’s decision if the consequence stood would come by the end of today, along with the revelation of whether or not Sarge accepted his suspension—and with it the likely end of his career with SRU—or if instead he would continue to lead the team.

Jules echoed his sigh.

"We still haven't talked about it," Sam’s tone was somber.

Jules knew exactly what he meant. "Which one of us leaves."

"Maybe it's me. I'm ready to lead a team of my own." It was true. Over his years in SRU, Sam had dramatically transformed from the cocky soldier he'd been into a talented and capable police constable, one more than ready to permanently hold the tactical leadership spot on any team. The months spent acting as the TL for Team One during Ed's recuperation had amply demonstrated Sam's abilities, and the times since then when they'd swapped roles for a shift had been icing on the cake in terms of proving the younger officer's qualification for promotion.

"Except there are no vacancies for SRU Team Leaders right now."

Sam knew that just as well as she did. There might have been an open spot, if Donna had followed through on her decision to leave Team Three after getting married, which would have let Team Three's current TL step up to command the team. But the mandatory time off as a result of pulling her gun on her old undercover partner after he'd shot her new husband—turning her into a subject Ed had had to talk down—led Donna to have a change of heart and recently return to her position as Sergeant.

"My dad called," Sam confessed.

Jules was surprised. Sam hadn't mentioned it before now, and as far as she remembered father and son didn't speak too often. Sam's departure from Special Forces to return to the police force—abandoning the family tradition of military service—had never sat well with the elder Braddock. Though the General had backed off as time passed, Jules still didn't think he had fully accepted Sam's separation from the military was permanent and that he had no plans to ever return. That, coupled with nearly a lifetime of distance and tension stemming from the childhood death of one of Sam's younger sisters, meant that things tended to get tense between Sam and the General whenever they visited in person or to a lesser degree talked on the phone. Distance was adopted as a peacekeeping necessity. She waited in silence for Sam to elaborate.

"He said there's a position overseas for me if I want to take it."

The sentence was a punch to Jules' stomach. A position overseas—most likely one back in Special Forces—would almost certainly mean that Sam would be based there and not in Canada. 

“Where?” she asked softly.

“Does it matter?” his own voice was bleak.

"Would you take it?" pain permeated her quiet question.

"I don't _want_ to take it," Sam's reply was just as softly spoken and full of potential grief. While reactivating to a role in the military would give him a job if forced to leave SRU, it wasn't a choice he wished to make. Sam didn't _want_ to go back into Special Forces or even the regular Army—he just might not end up with another option.

Greg and Ed returned to the lobby, still locked in an intense discussion interrupted by the blaring claxon, flashing lights, and announcement from Winnie of a hot call.

“Team One, gear up. Shots fired at St. Pat’s.”

“Let’s go,” Greg addressed his team. “Jules, you’re with me.”

“Who’s our hero?” Ed asked after Winnie reported on the two cars fleeing the hospital.

“District Three, Firehouse Eleven. Still waiting on a name,” Winnie was apologetic. “Apparently there was an attack on an injured member of his crew.”

Greg and Jules drove to the hospital to investigate, while Spike and Raf turned their SUV to follow Ed and Sam in pursuit of the subject and firefighter.

“Beth Topp, Arson Investigation,” a dark-haired woman greeted Greg and Jules, interrupting the nurse’s description of the attack on the firefighter and his injuries from the fire. 

“Who attacks a firefighter in their bed?” Jules wondered.

“I’m guessing the guy who started the fire,” Beth answered bitterly. 

“You hearing this, Sam?” Jules spoke to her teammate over the radio link.

“Copy. Unis have a visual on the cars,” Sam replied. "They're running lights south on Cherry."

“Why don’t you come with us?” Jules asked Beth. “Fill us in as we go.”

The pursuit dead-ended in an industrial area of the city, in what rather looked to be a mix of a junkyard and an outdoor storage area, filled with boats, barrels, and cars. Ed detailed his team to sweep the area to find the subject and fireman. Greg, Jules, and Beth had only just arrived when gunshots echoed in the air. The rest of the team converged on the sound to find the fire captain, Simon, struggling with the gunman.

“Taking fire. Civilians at risk,” Spike announced as he and Raf ducked for cover behind a cluster of barrels.

“Ed, we need backup,” Raf echoed. “Need it now.” He ordered Simon away from the gunman to give the team a clear shot at the active shooter, but if the captain heard he didn’t obey. A moment later, the gunman had Simon in a headlock, gun pointed at his head. But seeing the quartet of approaching SRU officers, the gunman shoved his hostage away and took off running behind the cover of a boat. Ed moved to where the captain lay on the ground; the other SRU officers pursuing the gunman.

“Stay down, Simon,” commanded Ed.

“I got him,” Greg said as he and Jules caught up to the team.

“Jules, with me. Let’s move,” Ed ordered her to follow him after the others. While she loved getting to work so closely with the Boss on negotiating and profiling, there was still that part of her that relished the opportunities to be in the thick of the tactical action, to have a day be a “Jules Day” as she’d teased the others about numerous times. One of the most memorable of those had been when she—and the team—met Sam for the first time. A day where she had been designated as Sierra One for the hot call at Pershore Plaza until outdated building plans forced her to hand it off to Ed. How much might have been different, she’d often wondered, if those plans hadn’t changed, if she’d been the one to take the shot to kill Goran Tomasic? She would've gone with SIU after the call and so wouldn’t have pulled her gun on Sam by the SUVs, might not have been on the rooftop months later to be shot by Petar Tomasic…

“Gotta take you back to the truck, Captain,” Greg told Simon, who was pacing around agitatedly—no surprise for a man who’d just been held at gunpoint. Against his better judgment, the sergeant didn’t fight long against Simon’s insistence on returning to the hospital to be with Gordon—he couldn’t disagree with the man’s position that as both friend and commander his place was with his injured guy. 

“Boss, we got him,” Ed announced over the radio link. Greg shook off his misgivings and moved to join his team. Jules covered Spike while he deployed a thermal imager to locate the subject in his marine hiding place.

"We go in hard, he's gonna start shooting," observed Ed calmly.

"I'd say break the window, flash-bang him, but given his hobby..." Sam noted. 

"Who knows what he's got in there," Ed finished his teammate's thought.

Raf concurred. "Whole boat could blow." Maybe even the whole area, what with all the junk and potentially incendiary material nearby.

"I guess we got to talk him out," Sam said. It was a distinct different from the hard tactics attitude he'd had on first joining Team One more than four years earlier.

The team’s skills quickly imposed order on a chaotic situation. Spike identified the subject as Andrew Hammond using the car’s license plate. Unsealing a youth record revealed a typical abuse-fueled pattern of accelerating behavior for this type of offender. This dive into Andrew’s background divulged the name of his partner in crime: his brother Robert. Beth’s insights on the psychology of firebugs helped Jules and Greg build a profile of Andrew’s path to becoming a serial arsonist. While Sam covered the scene from his sniper’s perch, Raf enacted Ed’s tactical plan by sticking a canister in the boat’s air vent, filling the cabin with smoke and forcing the subject to open the door.

On her way back to the hospital to check on Simon and Gordon, Beth provided the missing piece of the puzzle: Robert "Robbie" Hammond worked as a janitor at Firehouse 11--the very place where Simon, Gordon, and their team were based--which made perfect sense of the firefighter textbook Sam found inside the boat.

"I should never have let him go, not in the state he was in," Greg told Jules, castigating himself for having let the fire captain leave the scene. The fact that Simon didn't answer his phone when Greg tried to call him set off alarm bells in the sergeant.

"Boss, it was the right call," Jules assured him. "If Gord wakes up, he's going to want to see a friend. It's okay."

Team one exchanged disbelieving glances as the arson investigator spoke to their boss about Simon’s probable mercy killing of his injured teammate in the hospital.

"Let's call the firehouse. Tell them we're on our way," Greg gestured to his team and they ran back to the SUVs.

Jules asked, "Beth, are you close to Simon?"

Listening over the comm link, most members of Team One grimaced in understanding at the answer Beth provided to Jules’ question about Simon’s home life. The long and crazy hours first responders worked, the terrible things they saw, were unable to forget yet unwilling to discuss...too often, people either shut down or lashed out. For Greg, it had been diving into the bottle until his wife took their son and left the country. Ed's modus operandi had been to emotionally withdraw, shut everything inside himself and the locked cabinet in his garage. Spike had argued with his father and lavished attention on Babycakes, while Raf kept the team at a distance and tried to submerge himself in music. Jules had poured hours of time into rehabbing her home, and Sam did his best to punch out his frustrations on a heavy bag. 

Greg smiled faintly, thinking of his son. Though only a teenager, Dean already showed himself to be perceptive and empathetic, instinctively knowing when his father had a bad day and offering a listening ear or a plate of pasta. And there was Marina, too. Not that she always understood, but the traumatic Valentine's Day when they'd met did give her more insight than most civilians could manage. Ed opened up more to Sophie than he used to, not that it much easier for him now than in the past. Spike leaned on the team for the support that neither his late father nor still-living mother could provide. Raf usually wished that he could turn to his own dad for advice without prison glass between them. Sam and Jules had each other now and were fervently grateful for that.

"So if it's not his family, who does he turn to?" Jules wondered. 

"His crew?" Greg asked.

"He takes on everything they're going through, like it's his own war to win. He's tough on himself," answered Beth.

"How so?" Jules asked.

"No matter how many things he does right--" Beth began. 

Greg finished, "--All he knows is what he's done wrong." 

After the call with Beth ended, Jules queried, "Are you okay, Boss?" But Greg didn't answer. A talented profiler, Jules realized the answer to her question was a sure "no". Simon wasn't the only person who blamed himself for things outside his control. They all did, to some degree—part and parcel of being dedicated law enforcement personnel and first responders. Jules strongly suspected that the boss felt his suspension to be deserved, that he'd let his team down by subjecting them to Toth's psychological grilling and oversight. As insightful as Greg was, he couldn't seem to see that no one on the team blamed him—had ever blamed him—for doing what he'd thought was right.

In another SUV, Sam’s hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. He could understand Simon’s likely feelings of guilt over Gordon, the subordinate he couldn’t protect and the burned boy he couldn’t save. Sam had his own reminders of failure. His best friend Matt and Darren Kovacs were only two. With sudden insight, Sam thought that Simon and Boss had a lot in common. He hoped the similar experience would come in handy with whatever awaited them at the firehouse.

Exiting their vehicles at the firehouse, Team One learned that Robert was now Simon’s hostage, both barricaded inside the burn house. Worse, Simon had ordered one of his men start a burn sequence before smashing the controlling computer and kill switch.

"So it's down to Simon," Ed stated. It grated on the tactical leader that the team didn't have much in the way of options for preventing two more deaths today.

Raf stated, "He wants to give the man a taste of his own."

"But he's got no exit strategy," Sam noted with a grimace, seeing another similarity to the day at the Godwin.

Jules ran up to the team, having talked to the other members of the firehouse crew. "So when Simon got here, he was very upset. Said he was done talking. Barry also said it's not the first time. The little boy who died in the fire--Simon blames himself."

Sam observed, "He's got every reason to want to hurt this guy." 

"This is sounding like suicide intent here," Ed said the obvious. Locked doors and windows, no safety gear, smashed equipment—it all added up to Simon intending his own death as well as Robert's.

"I let him go," Greg recriminated. "I saw the signs and I let him go." He didn't add his next thought, _'Gord died because I let Simon go back to the hospital alone.'_

Ed shook his head. "Greg, this is about Simon. Now we gotta get him to hit that kill switch before this fire starts."

"Here's a walkie," Jules held out the handset a firefighter had brought. "He can hear us, but we have to get Simon to turn on the intercom system so that we can hear him."

Everyone on Team One watched in disbelief as their sergeant refused the walkie talkie Jules tried to hand him, told Ed to take the lead, and then walked away.

"Well, I guess the Sarge made his choice today," Jules spoke somberly and directed a meaningful look at Sam.

"I got him. I'll talk to him," Ed said, clearly referring to Greg. "Jules, take it."

"I'll do the talk," she agreed.

"I'll do tac," Sam stated. "There's got to be a way in. Raf. Barry," he gestured to his teammate and the firefighter to follow him. 

As the tactical plan developed, Jules continued trying to make contact with the barricaded suicidal subject. "Simon, I know that you can hear me. I need you to turn on the intercom so that we can hear you. Simon, I need you to come outta there now. The burn sequence is going to start in a few seconds. Simon, answer me please!" The continued silence on the other end of the line made Jules' worry increase. 

While part of his attention noted the firefighters approaching with their extraction equipment, Sam couldn't help but empathize with Jules' unspoken frustration that talk wasn't working right now. "Simon, I need to hear your voice, okay?"

Simon’s threat to kill Robert if the rescue effort continued made Sam order a halt. The threat had to be taken seriously, even if part of him—of all of them—could see the poetic justice in having a firebug die by his own weapon. But Team One couldn't let that happen—couldn’t let Simon take this kind of revenge and take his own life in the process.

"A fast track to the kill switch would be good," Sam spoke quietly to Jules. The only ways to safely enter the structure would take more time than remained before both men trapped inside the burn house would either asphyxiate or burn to death.

"I'm trying," was her answer. "Simon, you have been through so much with your team. You can't throw it all away now. Simon, I know you can hear me. Turn the intercom on so that I can hear you," Jules fought to prevent her growing worry from invading her tone. Time was running out to resolve this without two deaths and she was failing—failing Simon, Robert…failing Boss most of all.

Sam's heart broke as he listened to Jules' best efforts continue to fall short. He knew only too well the pain that a failed negotiation brought. Darren Kovacs would always haunt him—knowing that he hadn't been able to reach the one person he ought to have been able to connect with through their mutual military service and best friend's death. Every member of the team had told and showed Sam he'd done everything humanly possible to reach Darren—the young man's death had been his own choice, not any failure by Sam or the team. Sometimes that helped the pain, other times it didn't. If she lost Simon today, Jules would blame herself for a long time, maybe always. She'd castigate herself for failing the Boss, too—for not having been able to step into his negotiating shoes well enough to connect with Simon.

From where he stood with Ed, Greg listened to Jules, this exceptional woman he’d trained to become a skilled negotiator.

"Simon, I need you to hit the kill switch right now. Simon, please hit the kill switch right now!" Jules' voice lacked her customary control, her desperation to make contact with the fire captain palpable. Clearly, Simon wasn't going to respond to her. Greg's mind flashed back to that day just a week ago when Jules and Sam's secret had been exposed again, the day she'd nearly died in the biolab. _'I couldn't get through to him.'_ she’d said, apologizing that Xavier Dodd was going to kill himself, her, and the two scientists. Jules had done everything right that day, too, yet blamed herself when there was no cause.

However much he felt he'd failed his team leading up to today, Greg couldn't fail them—couldn’t fail Jules, especially. From the headquarters briefing room last week, Greg had told a likely dying Jules that she hadn’t failed him, had done everything possible. The team believed he could connect to Simon now, so perhaps borrowing that faith would be enough to compensate for his own lack of it. Resolved, he strode back across the concrete to where Jules stood and held out his hand for the walkie talkie. She relinquished it in relief.

While Greg began talking to Simon, the rest of the team moved a short distance away.

"Hey, Simon. You remember what I said to you back at the boatyard? I said that I know—oh yeah, I know. I know what it's like to have other people's lives in your hands…It's about all the years, it's about all the people and all the lives that slipped away when you did your best. When doing your job just wasn't good enough and the only way to keep the nightmares away is to drink, or work harder, or to push the people that you love away so that you're anywhere except inside your head and seeing fathers fall as you hold their sons..."

Team One watched their leader in silence. They'd known Greg was the best one to connect with Simon, and this just proved it. Though only a few seconds passed, to those watching and waiting it was an eternity. With a rattle and clank, the trap door in the burn house's roof lifted and within moments Simon and Robert both emerged.

"You did it. He hit the kill switch," Ed sighed in relief. Greg gasped in an effort to fill his lungs. He turned and walked away again and this time the team let him go. They all knew about needing a few moments alone after an intense call, a bit of privacy to let emotions and adrenaline settle. 

"You okay?" Sam approached Jules after securing his gear in the SUV.

“I don't know. I guess," Jules sighed heavily. "I couldn't reach Simon. I didn't make the connection."

"Hey," Sam stopped his girlfriend in her tracks. "Ed was right—you were doing everything right. Do you hear me? _You were doing everything right_. It is not your fault Simon didn't respond."

She took a deep breath and looked up at him. "I know. I just..."

"Yeah. But Simon needed to hear from the Boss and Boss needed to talk to him."

"He walked away, Sam. He--"

Sam could see Jules struggled over that as much as her failure with Simon and gave her a short platonic hug. "We just have to have faith that the Boss will do what's best—for himself and for the team. I'm not going to count him out, though. Not yet."

The section of lakefront beach reserved for the team's annual picnic filled up gradually. The Lanes arrived early so Ed could begin heating up the grill while Sophie started setting up the side dishes she'd prepared. Raf, Spike, and Winnie all trickled in. Donna and her new husband, Hank—thankfully recovered from being shot on their wedding day—also arrived. Wordy and Shelly shepherded their three daughters from the parking area to the beach, warmly greeting everyone. Sam showed up, both arms loaded down with bags, which he dropped off before heading back to the parking area. He returned to the beach with Jules beside him. 

The couple held hands. No one made a big deal about it, not with everyone now aware of that status ad what was currently at stake. They all knew that the decision whether the couple could remain together professionally was expected anytime. So if this might be the only time Sam and Jules could attend a team occasion together openly as both a couple and as teammates, everyone would let them have this time. All hoped that this wouldn't be the only time, though. 

Greg opened his arms and gave Wordy a strong hug. He and his family would always have a standing invitation to the annual picnic no matter how long ago his service with the team might have been. But catching up was cut short when Greg's cell phone rang. The Caller ID showed Commander Holleran's number, and Greg apologized to Wordy and excused himself to take the call. 

"Parker."

"Greg. The Chief and I have been giving the situation with Braddock and Callaghan a great deal of thought this week, and we've come to a decision."

"Yes, Sir." Greg turned from where he stood near the lake's edge and wagged his fingers in summons. Jules touched Sam's bicep and the pair started across the beach toward their boss, swinging around to stand between Greg and the water. They waited in tense silence while Greg's call continued.

"This has not been an easy matter to weigh," Commander Holleran stated. "The rules are clear in this situation, and the fact that these two officers willfully broke those rules--and not just once, but apparently twice--is equally obvious. However, the statements offered on their behalf by you and the other members of the team are a compelling argument for the retention of both Braddock and Callaghan on Team One. Also, Dr. Toth has given a statement in their defense, including a detailed evaluation of last week's call at the bio lab and a year's worth of transcripts that never hinted at a romantic relationship between Callaghan and Braddock. The fact that no one suspected anything is a strong indicator that neither of them has or will allow their personal relationship to impact their work performance.”

Greg held his breath. It all sounded hopeful so far.

Holleran continued, “So, after careful consideration, we have decided to reverse the decision that one of them will need to leave the team in order to maintain their romantic relationship. Braddock and Callaghan may continue to serve together on the same team while dating outside of work. There will, of course, be the expectation that while they are on the clock they will maintain professional demeanor and behavior. But their after-hours activities are their own business and nothing of SRU's concern; no different than the personal lives of other officers. Should this relationship progress to marriage, however, the transfer of one of them to another team will be required if both wish to remain in SRU."

"Understood, Sir. And, thank you, Sir," Team One’s Sergeant heaved a mental sigh of relief.

"Give them both my congratulations, will you, Greg?"

"I will, Sir. Thank you, Sir." He ended the call and looked at Sam and Jules. Both faced him in immobile silence.

"Commander Holleran has shared the decision," Greg informed the couple before him. Neither one moved or seemed to breathe, almost as if functioning as snipers during a hot call, stationed in a Sierra perch waiting for a Scorpio call to be given.

"He has asked me to give you both his congratulations and express his confidence that you will both continue to perform your duties as members of Team One to the same high level that you have done up until now."

Brief and barely-seen smiles appeared on both faces, and each darted a quick glance at the other—an instinctive need to confirm that both had heard the same spoken words. But beyond that, neither Sam nor Jules reacted visibly.

“So that's it? After everything—that’s all you're going to do?" Greg teased.

Paralysis broken, larger true smiles grew on both faces. Bodies turned and flowed together in a fervent embrace. Jules' face buried itself against Sam's chest and his face rested in the crook of her neck as both sets of arms squeezed tightly.

Greg looked toward the rest of the team, whose faces now showed relief and pleasure as they came to the correct conclusion about the call's content.

"In case you can't tell," he gestured back to the embracing couple, "these two have been cleared by the chief to remain on Team One, regardless of how they choose to spend their free time."

Applause and grins were the universal response.

He turned to face Sam and Jules again. No longer embracing, they stood close together, his arm circling her shoulders and hers around his waist.

"Thank you," Sam told him sincerely, extending his free hand to clasp Greg's shoulder. A simple statement that covered so much. Thank you for making me a part of this team. Thank you for believing Jules and I could be lovers and still do our jobs. Thank you for trusting me with Jules' heart.

"No, Sam, thank _you,_ " Greg replied. "We usually get to choose our teams, but in your case we had greatness thrust upon us. We're proud to have you." He means it wholeheartedly. Sam has matured so much during his years on the team and Greg is so proud of how he’s made the transition from soldier to cop.

After a quick flick of his gaze to Jules, Sam said, "Nowhere else I'd rather be."

"Jules, you are my right hand. You are my heart. You teach me something new every day." Greg’s next words address the woman who has long been like a daughter to him. Seeing how she has matured as a profiler and negotiator…everything he had hoped for when selecting her for the team.

Her usual tough-cop demeanor didn't completely mask Jules’s reaction to his approbation; in fact, her free hand lifted to brush against glistening eyelashes.

Similar praise was next delivered to Wordy, Spike, and Raf. Unable to do likewise for Ed, Greg strode away with Ed following. 

Silence again covered the beach as everyone waited for the day’s other answer: would Greg Parker continue to lead Team One, or would this the end? They watched as Sergeant and Team Leader spoke and a folded paper passed from one to the other. 

“Let's keep the peace,” Greg said, loudly enough for the team to catch.

With a laugh, Ed ripped up paper and tossed the bits in air. Smiles of relief appeared on faces, hugs and back slaps followed.

With the pressure of waiting for the day’s decisions abated, an air of exuberant celebration seized the gathered teammates and family members.

Wordy took a moment to pull Sam aside.

"I'm happy for you," he said. Wordy knew without having to ask that it would have been Sam to leave the team if the situation had come to the tipping point. It was just in his nature to make that kind of sacrifice for Jules. He was so happy for both of them that it was something Sam wouldn't have to do. Team One has been and is a better team because both of them were on it.

"Even though we broke the rules? Lied to the team--again?" Sam’s brow lifted in question.

"I kept my own secrets from the team, remember, so I'm the last person to throw stones," Wordy reminded him. "I've been a cop long enough to know why those kinds of rules are necessary, but...neither you nor Jules have ever been standard issue, Sam. What was it that Spike nicknamed you? Samtastic, right? Well, you are. What I heard about that call at the biolab last week...I know I couldn't have done that. Maybe you two are just the one in a million couple who could."

"It wasn't easy," admitted Sam. "Maybe the hardest thing I've ever done--even harder than not throwing in the towel after Matt's death."

“I hear you. You got through that and emerged stronger as a person. I think what you and Jules have been through will be the same. This life isn’t easy on relationships, but I know you two will beat the odds.”

As the sun began to set, Dean and Clark were deputized—under Ed's careful supervision—to dig a fire pit in the sand and stack logs for a bonfire. Everyone pretended not to notice when Sam and Jules slipped away a short distance down the beach for some time alone. They could all relate—albeit with varying degrees of understanding—to how stressful this week must have been for this couple. 

Sam reached out and wrapped his arm around Jules' waist, pulling her close against his side. Even with their height difference, their walk down the beach away from the gathering was effortlessly in perfect step. They loved spending time around their chosen family, and were grateful to be able to celebrate today's good news with all of them, but both knew that they needed a moment alone. They finally stopped a little way down the beach, still within sight of the party, but definitely out of earshot.

"I can't believe it," Sam moved his other arm to enclose his girlfriend within his embrace. His girlfriend. It feels good--so damned good--to be able to call Jules that openly now, to hold her this way in public and around their team without fear of being caught. Despite his confident words to Jules earlier in the day, in truth Sam hadn't been at all convinced that the Chief would decide this in their favor. He'd at least half-expected Sarge would regretfully tell him and Jules that the ruling for disciplinary action against them would stand and that they'd have a short amount of time to decide which of them would stay on the team and who would leave. It was a big part of why he'd heard his dad out when the General had called the other day with the overseas job offer. Like he'd told Jules, he wouldn't willingly take the job, but not having SRU limited his options. Thankfully—blessedly—that’s not a worry anymore. He gets to keep his job and his girlfriend. Life is good.

"Me, either. I feel like I've got to be dreaming," Jules shifted so that she could slide her other arm around Sam, too. His head came to rest against hers, and they just stood beside the lake savoring their good fortune.

"But we aren't dreaming, not anymore. This is real," Sam's words were spoken with a sense of wonder. He pulled back from her just enough to be able to look down into her uplifted eyes. "We get each other, and our jobs, and the Boss is staying with the team. Things can't get any better."

"Well...maybe it can get a _little_ better," Jules purred slyly. She lifted up onto her toes and kissed him. Sam's body was between her and their audience, so it might not be obvious to _everyone_ just what they were doing. They hadn't yet had time to discuss what level of PDA—if any—they’d do in front of their teammates and friends. At the moment, however, Sam couldn't bring himself to care one iota what their teammates, or their spouses and kids, might see or suspect.

"Ready to go back?" she asked, after dropping back down.

Sam gave her a dark look. What he was really ready for—and Jules knew it—wasn’t something appropriate for a beach full of families. With immense effort, Sam fought to quell the obvious signs of the desire he always felt for her. Only a few more hours, and then they would be home, alone, and the floodgates could be opened to allow passion free.

"Yeah, I am," he finally answered aloud. "The question is: are you?"

Jules laughed, whirled away from Sam, and started to run. But the platform wedge shoes she wore would have hampered her even on the firmest ground and the beach sand was far from solid, so Sam caught her quickly, sweeping Jules off her feet and through the air in a circle as he spun around.

"So, did you know?" Shelly Wordsworth sipped from her cup of lemonade and lifted an eyebrow at her longtime friend Sophie Lane.

"No. Well, not until Eddie came home from work a week ago and told me. If I think about it, though, I guess I can't say I'm too surprised. Those two--" Sophie pointed down the beach to where Sam and Jules spun around like kids. "Those two have always had a strong connection, haven't they?"

"Yep," dispatcher Winnie agreed. "It's so obvious now, looking back at everything. I'm just amazed they were able to keep it a secret for so long."

"They would really have been forced to break up or leave the team?" queried Marina. As Greg's semi-official girlfriend and still quite new to the SRU life, she was understandably unfamiliar with the rules.

Winnie nodded. "Yes. Police department policies officially prohibit immediate colleagues from dating, due to Priority of Life concerns—the belief that officers in a personal relationship would put each other's safety above that of a civilian or another teammate or a subject. Obviously those concerns are wasted where Sam and Jules are concerned, but most other officers..." Even though the rule doesn't exactly apply to her—not being a member of a team, per se—it’s still something Winnie chose a long time ago to take to heart. She wanted a guy to come home to at night who wouldn't want to "talk shop" or who she'd have to worry about not coming home to her at all. It had been her personal rule for a while now, although there have been times...

"Sam! Put me down!" Jules was breathless from their spinning and her own slightly giddy laughter.

Sam slowed his movement then stopped. He lowered Jules to the ground with obvious reluctance. Leaving one hand wrapped around her waist, the other lifted to tangle in her hair and pull her head close for a kiss—which their change in positions made visible to their friends. Jules didn't protest, but she also didn't let things escalate further.

"Let's spend time with our family, okay?"

Sam glanced down the beach to where more than a few people were looking at them with amusement and, he thought, pleasure. "Celebrate, right?"

"Yep. Celebrate with them now, and then later..."

"Copy that." 

When they rejoined the party, Wordy's daughter Ally sidled over to Sam. "Uncle Sam, you kissed Aunt Jules," she said in a stage-whisper.

"I did."

"How come?"

"Because I love her. Like your Dad loves your Mom. He kisses Mom, doesn't he?"

"Yep," and she gave a theatrical smack with her own lips in illustration, making many people laugh.

"Did you have any idea?" Hank asked Donna in a low voice. 

She shook her head. "Not a clue. They kept things absolutely professional from what I could see. But..."

"But what?"

"I think I just figured out why he didn't like me."

"You mean Sam?"

"Yeah. When I first joined SRU it was as a temporary member of Team One while Jules was out on medical leave after being shot. Sam was...decidedly not welcoming to me. Pretty standoff-ish, really."

"Like gum on the bottom of your shoe kind of thing?"

"Exactly," Donna laughed softly. "But he lightened up and was friendlier after Jules came back and I switched over to Team Three. All of this," her hand gestured around, "I think it explains why Sam acted the way he did. If they were involved back then or even if it was just attraction--"

"He might have seen you as competition for her job and resented you for it," Hank figured it out.

"That's what I'm thinking."

"How's Nat?" Spike asked. 

"She's fine. She's been staying with my mom lately, but said she plans to head down to New York soon. Some kind of modeling job." Sam shook his head. His younger sister had been in Toronto for nearly the entire past year, crashing at Sam's apartment. Given the fact that the two siblings hadn't spent much time around each other in years, it had made tension rise the longer the roommate situation lasted—and not just because Natalie had nearly spilled his and Jules' secret to the team during her first visit to the station back on Valentine's Day. Natalie had met Spike that day, too. Sam hadn't really liked it when his teammate started casually dating his sister, but at the same time hadn't complained aloud too much since it meant both Natalie and Spike were distracted and not focusing on him and Jules. But Natalie had moved out and left town about a month ago, understandably traumatized by being kidnapped by her criminal ex-boyfriend, slapped around, and watching Spike beaten up just because he tried to help her.

 _"I have to get out of here,"_ Natalie had said while throwing all her things carelessly into suitcases. _"I'm trouble. I don't think. I've got to get away. Not think about it all the time."_

 _"You aren't trouble, Nat,"_ Sam had sighed. _"But I know what you mean about getting away from the memories. And you are smart--"_

_"Really? I got myself--and Spike--held hostage by my drug-running ex-boyfriend. Spike got beaten up because of me!"_

_"Nat! Okay, yeah, actually talking to David once you realized it was him calling you wasn't the best idea. And going to his apartment...nope, definitely not a good plan. But unless he told you what he was going to do to you and to Spike once you got there, then you didn't make it happen. You're going to be okay. Spike's going to be okay. And David and his surviving guys are in jail--for good, this time."_

_"See! I don't think things through."_

_"So learn to!"_ Sam let a little heat creep into his voice. _"You are smart. You just need to use it. Observe and evaluate. Be aware."_

"That's good. I hope she'll be okay," Spike said.

"I'm sure she will be. She's a Braddock. She's tough. What about you?"

"I'm okay." Not that Spike would ever say anything to Sam, but he wasn't really—okay, not at all—brokenhearted about Natalie's departure. She'd been fun to hang out with and date occasionally, but anything long-term... Spike could see now why Sam wasn't too cozy with his sister and why he'd obviously come to resent her proximity after a while. There had been times after their abduction when Spike had resented her, too, even though he professionally knew better. Blaming a victim for their own kidnapping was never the right thing to do. So as an SRU officer he absolutely didn't blame her. But as a guy and semi-boyfriend...? Spike knew she hadn’t meant for any of it to happen, but she hadn’t done as much as she could have to prevent it, either. Maybe she hadn’t known what her options were—fashion models weren’t trained the way cops or soldiers were. Though, why wouldn’t General Braddock have made sure his only surviving daughter knew how to handle herself in dangerous situations? Given what Sam had told the team about Natalie having been arrested in South America for being David's unwitting drug mule--and turning witness against him at his trial—why, exactly, had she not hung up immediately when she realized who had called her? Why had she gone to David's rental apartment? Why had she called Spike instead of her ex-Special Forces brother? His cuts had healed and his bruises long since faded away, but Spike knew that the memories of being tied up and beaten would linger a while. Not seeing Natalie for a while might help them fade faster.

Sam was relieved that Spike didn't seem to be pining over Natalie. He would have accepted things if they'd chosen to keep seeing each other, even if he'd always thought that Spike could do better. Part of Sam wanted to kick himself for thinking so uncharitably about his own sister, but the other part of him knew that it was true. Natalie had been, was, and would always be too reckless and thoughtless for a careful, deliberate bomb tech like Spike. Opposites might attract, as the saying went, but usually that only preceded a major explosion or implosion. It seemed that the latter had occurred here.

"What, you're leaving already?" Spike looked in surprise to where Sam and Jules were packing up their stuff.

"Yeah," Sam glanced over his shoulder. "Heading home."

"Home? Which home? Yours or Jules'?"

"Hers. Been crashing there more often than not for months now."

Spike's mouth dropped open. "You mean to say you basically moved in with Jules already?"

"You mean to say you thought I was sleeping on my couch every night for the past year?" Sam snorted. "I did sleep at my apartment occasionally, but usually I only stopped by to swap out clothes. Mostly I was at Jules' house."

Much of the team's laughter was self-depreciating in nature. No, apparently none of them actually _had_ thought about the logistics of Sam and his sister sharing a one-bedroom apartment for almost an entire year.

"Get out of here then, lovebirds," Ed teased, accompanied by an exaggerated shooing motion.

"Copy that," the sniper shot back with perfect accuracy. "C'mon, my SSC. We've been ordered to leave." His free arm linked with Jules' as they obeyed Ed.

"SSC?" Raf wondered once the pair was out of earshot.

"I don't think I want to know," Spike shook his head. Not that he wasn't curious—he absolutely was. However the techie had healthy respect for his own mental health, and Sam might just provide an answer if asked what the acronym signified. For that matter, Spike also valued his physical well-being, and Jules might just take it out on him during their next hand-to-hand combat training session if the whole "SSC" thing was something she preferred keeping private.

"My SSC?" queried Jules in the Jeep.

"Sexy Sniper Chick," grinned Sam.

As a capable and independent officer, she might have protested about the possessive description, but the female part of her relished it. Jules secretly loved how Sam never let her doubt how he felt about her, even if she’d been the only one who knew just how much until recently.

"Need anything from your apartment?"

"Nope. I'm good."

"Guess that was another way we could've gotten busted but didn't," Jules shook her head in bemusement. "Really? None of them wondered about two adult siblings of different genders sharing a one-bedroom apartment for a year?"

"Yeah. Lucky for us that they didn't, though."

Jules nodded and drove quietly for several minutes. "About that apartment..."

"What about it?"

"Now that everyone knows about us and we've got the green light with SRU, you don't _have_ to keep the apartment for camouflage anymore."

"Julianna Callaghan! Are you asking me to move in with you?" Sam grinned at his girlfriend and took advantage of the red traffic light to lean over and plant a quick, light kiss on her cheek.

"And if I am?"

"I'm listening. Convince me."

"The fact that we _can_ do it isn't enough motivation?"

"I like to get the full picture."

"Oh, you do, do you? Well, in that case..." Jules's hand moved from the gearshift to rest on Sam's thigh. Slowly and lightly, her fingers began to trace back and forth along the inseam of his denim jeans as she continued speaking, "You won't be wasting gas visiting an apartment you almost never sleep in, you'll save money on the rent and utilities for an apartment you don't use, we could drive to work together..."

Sam was hearing but not comprehending the logical reasons for them to live together now--how could he with the path of her fingers? Not that they were heading where he most wanted her touch, but where they _did_ stroke was going to get him in trouble fast.

"Juulllesss..." his guttural moan made her smile in purely feminine satisfaction at having such a powerful Alpha male at her mercy simply from the feather-touch of her fingers through a layer of fabric separation.

It took a supreme effort of willpower for Sam to move his hand to take hold of Jules' and lift it off his leg. Then, deciding that turnabout was fair play, he flipped her arm over and began tracing a path up and down each of her fingers, spiraling across the palm of her hand, and then up the sensitive, smooth skin of her bared forearm. A smirk of equal masculine gratification appeared on Sam's face as Jules' right arm twitched within his grasp and her left hand clenched around the steering wheel.

"Sam--" Jules' whisper of his name was more a strangled gasp than breathy sigh.

"Get us home, NOW!" Sam growled.

In short order--and thankfully minus any traffic tickets or accidents--Jules parked the jeep in front of her house. She opened her door and exited before Sam could launch a distract-and-delay move that might get them into trouble if any of her neighbors noticed.

"Jules!" he pouted. 

"If we get the food into the fridge now, we'll have something to eat tomorrow without having to leave the house," she pointed out logically.

"There's always delivery," Sam responded, but all the same started grabbing things to bring in.

Further torturing them both, Jules insisted that they put everything away, not just the perishables. She leaned against Sam while handing him items to put on a high cabinet shelf. He brushed against her while setting stuff in the fridge. The light touches, which they could now indulge in freely, restarted the fire burning in each of them only banked since their drive home, accelerating pulses and respiration.

"Happy now?" Sam asked.

"Very," Jules replied, meaning far more than just the state of her kitchen.

Sam pulled her close and resumed his campaign of seduction even as he moved them both across the floor toward the stairs. Their typically tidy habits were abandoned as clothing was removed one item at a time while they ascended the stairs. Hands calloused by hours practicing at the firing range caressed over revealed skin in random movements that often stopped or resumed jerkily due to the touches being received. Mouths swallowed gasps, moans, and cries in deference to the open windows that allowed the night air to tickle flesh and ruffle hair.

Perhaps it had been the forbidden nature of their romance. It could have resulted from the high-risk nature of their mutual profession. Whatever the cause, sex between Sam and Jules had never just been about physical gratification--partly, yes, but not totally. Their lovemaking was an affirmation of life, of choice, of commitment. The complete and utter trust between two people, an act of faith for individuals who had both suffered loss and yet persevered to reach out again in hope. Tonight, it was again all those things, but something more as well. Maybe it was just the simple awareness that their friends and colleagues now knew the truth about their relationship and were happy--about it and for them. Or that they didn't have to hide their feelings anymore or look over shoulders for anyone who might know them professionally. Whatever it was, it took what had always existed between this pair and made it deeper and richer than ever before.

"So, are you ever going to answer my question?" Jules lifted her head slightly off Sam's chest, where it had been pillowed in post-coital bliss.

"Hmm?" Sam's reply was vague and more than half-asleep.

"Moving in?"

He stretched in an effort to awaken enough to give a coherent answer. Jules, for her part, valiantly resisted the inclination to let the proximity of Sam's nude perfection distract her. 

"I’d love to. Luckily, I still have the lease renewal paperwork from the management company. I'll let them know I'll be out by the end of next month. End of this month, even, but they may not let me bail on my lease early. You sure about this? I might end up being a crappy roommate."

"I'll take my chances. Because you, my SSG, aren't going anywhere."

"Copy that," and Sam rolled over to press Jules deep into the mattress and proceeded to kiss her fervently, rekindling the fire that always resided in each of them. Alpha male he might be, but Sam had no problems whatsoever being Jules' Sexy Sniper Guy.

The End


End file.
